Revisiting Balint's innovation: enhancing capacity in collaborative mental health care

Abstract

Interprofessional collaboration is increasingly recognized as a key response to the challenges associated with complex mental health issues in community primary-care settings. Relatively few practice models, however, provide an orientation and a structure that combines quality patient care, professional development, and the building of community capacity. A psychodynamic tradition of supervision and collaboration, an approach known as the Balint model, holds considerable potential to bring this orientation to collaborative primary care and mental health teams. As a consultation group, the Balint approach brings participants' attention to subtle emotional–interpersonal phenomena such as the provider–patient relationship, the presentation of illness, and the experiences of patients and team members. We introduce and provide an overview of the Balint group model, including several concepts proposed by Balint to illuminate the emotional and relational complexities of providing mental health care in a collaborative primary-care setting. The context of our discussion is the implementation of a modified Balint group approach within a Canadian collaborative mental health Care (CMHC) program. We also discuss how an interprofessional application of this approach can enhance patient care, contribute to care providers' professional development, and build community capacity.

• Balint model
• community capacity building
• collaborative mental health care
• interprofessional collaboration
• psychodynamic approach

Notes

¹Here we limit our discussion of the “community” to care providers that include physicians in family medicine, psychiatrists, and other non-medical care providers (e.g. social workers, psychotherapists, nurses), in order to closely align with the Balint model. However, we acknowledge the broader care community includes patients' families and other community service agencies (e.g. school, employment).