Challenges in Primary Mental Health Care: Models for Interdisciplinary Collaboration

This insightful and timely book equips family doctors and other primary healthcare professionals with the knowledge and skills needed to address a diverse range of new and important challenges in the field of primary mental health care, including ongoing impacts from the COVID pandemic, thanatophobia, and end-of life care, humanitarian and geopolitical catastrophes, and the effects of climate change.

There is an emphasis throughout on the need to encourage and so reap the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration between family doctors and mental health specialists, and across the range of primary care and community workers. Effective primary healthcare relies increasingly on the use of remote consultations, and the book explains how the potential of remote working can be maximized in low-resource settings. The book concludes with a consideration of how to protect and enhance the mental health of primary care workers in the face of these ongoing challenges in care.

Key Features:

- Global and inclusive, providing practical guidance and direction across low-, middle-, and high-income settings, satisfying the needs of all primary care practitioners regardless of geography

- Focused on key and immediate challenges for primary care practitioners arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty, and social inequality, migration, and climate change

- Addresses the vital importance of self-care by and of primary healthcare workers facing unprecedented work and emotional pressures

Reflecting the expertise of the WONCA Working Party for Mental Health (WWPMH), building on the foundations laid in the 2020 WONCA volume Global Primary Mental Health Care, the editors and contributors all have expertise in primary mental health care at the frontline, with backgrounds in family medicine, psychiatry, psychology, and nursing.

Christos Lionis graduated as an MD from the University of Athens Medical School, and is board certified in both Internal Medicine and Social Medicine (Public Health). He also holds a PhD from the University of Crete with a focus on public health interventions and cardiovascular risk.

For the past twenty-five years, Christos has worked at the University of Crete Medical School, where he holds the Chair of General Practice and Primary Health Care. Additionally to his role as a Professor, he is the Director of the Clinic of Social and Family Medicine. With a passion for the importance and the value of Family Medicine, Christos is actively involved in the development of Primary Care and General Practice in Crete, particularly in rural areas, but also has a strong focus on the integration of public health and primary care, contributing in the creation of national and European networks. He is also the Coordinator of a thriving GP network, responsible for specialty training coordination and professional development of residents, as well as supervisor to a number of PhD students.

Christos has also acted as the Deputy General Director of the Regional Health and Welfare System of the Greek National Health Service for the Region of Crete. The Regional Health and Welfare System for the Region of Crete is the planning and regulatory body overseeing all health and welfare services across the island.

In parallel, for the past decade Christos has co-ordinated the Primary Health Care Unit at the Municipality of Heraklion, a shared initiative with the University Hospital and the Municipality of Heraklion. This facility offers medical care and assistance to socioeconomically deprived individuals, with a specific focus on chronic diseases.

He has served as Board Member in multiple professional associations and learned societies, and as an Advisor to the World Health Organisation, where he also serves as a Member of the Steering Group of the European Health Information Initiative since 2017, and he was appointed as Member of the European Commission’s Expert Panel on Effective Ways of Investing in Health in 2019.

Christopher Dowrick is Professor of Primary Medical Care and has a broad academic and clinical perspective, with particular interests in primary mental health care. In addition to his university work he is a General Practitioner with Aintree Park Group Practice, Professorial Research Fellow with the Department of General Practice in the University of Melbourne, and Chair of the Working Party for Mental Health in the World Organisation of Family Doctors.