How to Improve Collaboration Between General Practitioners and Clinical Psychologists for Their Patients' Common Mental Health Problems in Primary Care Context?

Background: Mental health problems have become a major topic of public health these last years, particularly since the pandemic of COVID-19. Primary care givers are confronted with high rates of common mental health problems (CMHPs) in population. This questions healthcare organization and specifically collaboration between general practitioners (GPs) and clinical psychologists (CPs). In this paper we aim to review recent literature to identify factors that facilitate or hinder collaboration between GPs and CPs when caring for their patients' CMHPs.

Methods: A non-systematic qualitative literature review was performed, using the PRISMA method. We restricted the review to papers published between 2010 and 2023.

Results: We identified 52 papers and after filtering, only 6 were included in the synthesis. Six main themes were identified: barriers to interprofessional collaboration, lack of mutual trust, mutual dissatisfaction with information exchanged, the paradox of professional secrecy, the necessity of a paradigm shift, and conceptual frameworks of collaboration. These themes were discussed to improve collaboration between GPs and CPs.

Conclusion: This work provides some recommendations to support the development of interprofessional collaboration between GPs and CPs in primary care.