Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Jul 27, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 27, 2021 - Sep 21, 2021
Date Accepted: Nov 29, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
On the same page or in a different book? A pilot project on the perceptions of educational needs in an era of shifting mental health care to primary care
ABSTRACT
Background:
There is an unmet need for mental health care in Canada. Seventy-five percent of visits for mental health services are related to mood and anxiety disorder, which occur most frequently in the primary care setting. Primary care providers such as general practitioners and family physicians are essential part of mental health care services. However, it is currently not well known what is needed to increase care providers’ willingness, comfort and skills to adequately provide care.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to understand the caregiver and family physician needs regarding the care and medical management of individuals with mental health conditions.
Methods:
A needs assessment was designed to understand the educational needs of caregivers and family physicians with regard to the provision of mental health care, specifically, to seek advice of the format and delivery mode for an educational curriculum to be accessed by both stakeholder groups. Exploratory qualitative interviews were conducted and data was collected and analysed iteratively until thematic saturation was achieved.
Results:
Caregivers of individuals with mental health conditions (n=24) and family physicians (n=10) were interviewed. Both caregivers and family physicians expressed dissatisfaction with the status quo regarding the provision of mental health care at the family physician’s office. They stated that there was a need for more educational materials as well as additional supports. Caregivers expressed a general lack of confidence in family physicians to manage their son/daughter’s mental health condition, while family physicians sought more networking opportunities to improve and facilitate provision of mental health care.
Conclusions:
Robust qualitative studies are necessary to identify the educational and medical management needs of caregivers and family physicians. Understanding each other’s perspectives is an essential first step to collaboratively designing, implementing, and the subsequent evaluation of community-based mental health care. Fortunately, there are initiatives underway already to address these need areas (e.g. websites such as eMentalHealth.ca/PrimaryCare as well as mentorship and collaborative care network) and information from this study can help inform the gaps in those existing initiatives. Clinical Trial: NA
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.