Mental Health

The goal of the National Primary Care Mental Health Collaborative is to assist primary care providers to develop their capability to deliver rapid, sustainable and systematic improvements in the care they provide to adults of working age with common mental health disorders, through a sound understanding and effective application of quality improvement methods, tools, techniques and skills

Key points

• The Collaborative program aims to improve the care of adults of working age with common mental health disorders in primary care.
• It will seek to establish systems to maximize management of service users closer to home.
• The program allows the continuation of Improvement Foundation support for improving the management of long-term conditions.
• 19 Primary Care Trusts sites with multidisciplinary improvement teams (including service users) are participating.
• The program is supported by the Department of Health, National Institute for Mental Health, Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health and a range of other stakeholders.

Achievements
All three Learning Workshops have now been completed. Participating sites are now concentrating on the spread of the program to enable additional practices to come on board.

In month 12 we are already seeing significant improvements with notable reductions in GP consultations, fewer referrals to the community mental health team and/or consultant psychiatrist and increases in the number of people with a common mental health disorder returning to work.

For more information see Mental Health Collaborative