Psychiatric Consultation-Liaison Intervention in Primary Care: A Pilot Study

The pilot study on the impact of a Psychiatric Consultation-Liaison Intervention in Primary Care Medical Consultations in French-speaking Switzerland (PLIMeC-P), is a mixed method randomized controlled trial. The investigated health-related intervention is a brief Consultation-Liaison (CL) psychiatry intervention in primary care. Primary Care Physicians (PCPs) have a key role in preventing, detecting, and managing mental disorders. Therefore, the optimization of both the quality of their interventions and their cooperation with psychiatric and psychological care networks are important challenges. It is well demonstrated that multidisciplinary interventions improve the efficacy of mental health care, CL psychiatry being one such type of intervention. Therefore, community CL-psychiatry, for example in private primary care group practices, are rare. The impact of such community, primary care CL-psychiatry interventions, should be investigated. The mixed methods randomized controlled trial PLIMeC study will examine the impact of a CL-psychiatric intervention in primary care settings, for newly reported mental illness, versus a Treatment As Usual (TAU) control arm. The intervention consists of a CL-psychiatric intervention into private medical practices, provided to patients suffering from mental health problems, a group of patients generally under-treated. The CL-psychiatrist will receive and discuss PCPs' referrals for patients with mental distress, who don't have a psychiatric follow-up. After a brief intervention (1-4 sessions), feedback conjoint (PCP-psychiatrist) session will be organized, to complete the intervention and provide proposals. The pilot study (PLIMeC-P) will determine whether the main planned study (PLIMeC) is feasible and practicable. It will be conducted on two sites, the Neuchâtel Psychiatry Centre (CNP) and the North-west Adult Psychiatry Service (SPANO), Department of Psychiatry of CHUV, Yverdon. For the pilot study (PLIMeC-P), 15 eligible participants are expected for each group, 30 participants in total. They will be recruited in three private primary care group practices. After eligibility and randomization 15 participants will be included for the intervention arm (brief CL-psychiatric intervention) and 15 for the control arm (TAU). The expected number of participants for the main trial (PLIMeC) will be estimated through analysis of the initial results of the PLIMeC-P.