The collection of general practice data for psychiatric service contracts.

A three-month prospective collection of primary care data from general surgery attendances in an inner London Health District was carried out to inform the setting of contracts for psychiatric services. This involved 21 general practitioners (GPs) selected from a total of 102 in the District. Information was collected on mental health disorders detected by GPs among the attenders, the resultant volume of care provided by the GPs, the referrals made to secondary care and other agencies, and the types of care identified by the practitioners as appropriate for a patient but which are currently not accessible or available. We found that 45.9 per cent of all patients (17,319/37,733) registered with the 21 GPs were seen in three months. There was an overrepresentation of White and Black Caribbean patients and an under-representation of Bangladeshi, Chinese, Black African and Black Other patients in the study population. Mental health disorders were detected in 13.3 per cent (2304) of all attenders. The commonest problems were depression (17.7 per cent), acute stress reaction (15.5 per cent), anxiety (15.1 per cent), drug abuse (7.2 per cent), schizophrenia (5.8 per cent) and alcohol abuse (5.3 per cent). It was found that 37.3 per cent (860) of all attenders received medication, 66.5 per cent (1532) were counselled by the GPs and only 4.4 per cent (102) were referred to a psychiatrist; 16.3 per cent (375) of those with mental health disorders were identified by the GPs as having a service need which the District's psychiatric service could not mee