Title: Should Mental Health Be a Primary-Care Doctor’s Job? | The New Yorker
Headings: Should Mental Health Be a Primary-Care Doctor’s Job?
Should Mental Health Be a Primary-Care Doctor’s Job?
Video From The New Yorker

Content: With mental illness, though, the limits of my role are less clear. I’m comfortable helping people get through life’s more common emotional challenges, like divorce, retirement, disappointing children. If you’re hearing voices, or if you walk into my office and announce that you’ve decided to kill yourself, as someone did not long ago, I know exactly what to do: escort you to a psychiatrist. But what about the lawyer who’s having trouble meeting deadlines and wants medication for attention-deficit disorder? Or the businesswoman whose therapist told her to see me about starting an antidepressant? Or the civil servant trying to shake his Oxycontin addiction? They’ve all asked me to treat them because they don’t want or can’t easily access psychiatric care. This winter, I’ll see more patients with seasonal-affective disorder than the flu, and the tissues in my exam room will dry tears more often than they muffle sneezes. The problem is, I lack the time or training to diagnose and manage many psychiatric disorders.