Meeting the targets

Abstract

The Health of the Nation (1992) made a number of suggestions for ways in which primary care might make its contribution:

• Primary health care teams and local secondary care services will need to develop local good practice guidelines for the assessment and management of common psychiatric conditions, events and emergencies and for the use of the Mental Health Act.

• Training for primary care teams,… is necessary to help them improve their recognition and assessment of depression, anxiety and suicide risk, and to manage them appropriately.

The follow-up document ‘First Steps’ (1992) provided some more explicit ideas for purchasers, provider units, FHSAs and for primary care itself. Prominent among them, yet again, was the need for training to improve the ‘recognition, assessment and management of depression, severe anxiety and suicide risk’.