Integrating treatment for mental and physical disorders and substance misuse in Indigenous primary care settings

Abstract

Objective: Australian Indigenous peoples in remote and rural settings continue to have limited access to treatment for mental illness. Comorbid disorders complicate presentations in primary care where Indigenous youths and perinatal women are at particular risk. Despite this high comorbidity there are few examples of successful models of integrated treatment. This paper outlines these challenges and provides recommendations for practice that derive from recent developments in the Northern Territory.

Conclusions: There is a strong need to develop evidence for the effectiveness of integrated and culturally informed individual and service level interventions. We describe the Best practice in Early intervention Assessment and Treatment of depression and substance misuse study which seeks to address this need.

Key words::

• brief psychotherapy
• depression
• mental health
• primary health care
• substance use disorders

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper was first presented at the Creating Futures conference, Cairns, 2010. The BEAT depression study is funded by beyondblue and the Northern Territory Department of Health and Families.

DISCLOSURES

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.