Each year, one in five Canadians will experience a mental health issue, and about 50 per cent will have experienced a mental Illness by age 40. For many, their first and sometimes only point of contact for medical assistance is their family doctor.
Now, University of Alberta psychiatrists are offering training, resources and ongoing support so family doctors in Alberta can deliver more timely and effective mental health care, especially to rural and Indigenous patients.
The new Alberta Network for Community Health Outreach and Rural Mental Health is a 12-week training program for family doctors that includes interactive educational sessions, collaborative case conferences and ongoing support with tools and access to experts. It is led by David Ross, chair of psychiatry, and Jeremy Weleff.
"The vast majority of individuals with psychiatric illness are going to be seen in primary care before they ever get to a psychiatrist, if they ever get to the psychiatrist," Ross points out. "We don't have nearly enough psychiatrists, and this problem is especially true for rural populations and in other underserved communities."
The goal of the new program is to mitigate this shortage by allowing psychiatrists to collaborate with family doctors, who may each have a caseload of several thousand people.
