Evidence
"primary health care"
Transforming assertive community treatment into an integrated care system: The role of nursing and primary care partnerships
This article argues that ACT is an ideal platform to provide both primary and behavioural health care to those with complex service needs. This article considers the transformation of the ACT mental health care model into an integrated health care delivery system by expanding and explicitly redefining the role of the ACT nurse to include establishing partnerships with primary care providers.
Keywords:
primary care
primary health care
chronic mental illness
community mental health services
service delivery systems
nurses
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module 4
Weinstein, L., Henwood, B., Cody, J., Jordan, M. & Lelar, R. (2011). Transforming assertive community treatment into an integrated care system: The role of nursing and primary care partnerships. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, 17, 64-71.
Assertive community treatment and the physical health needs of persons with severe mental illness: issues around integration of mental health and physical health.
This article involves a qualitative study that included five ACT teams and the level that they integrate mental health and physical health. The results of this qualitative study show three main themes (1) all ACT teams recognized serious and chronic physical health problems among consumers they served, (2) ACT teams took a variety of roles to address the physical health problems of their consumers, and (3) there were a number of challenges to integrating primary and mental health care within an ACT setting. The main conclusion is that ACT is well positioned to integrate physical health and mental health care and ACT staff expressed the need, desire, and willingness to integrate physical health care with mental health care.
Shattell, M., Donnelly, N., Scheyett, A., & Cuddeback, G. (2011). Assertive community treatment and the physical health needs of persons with severe mental illness: Issues around integration of mental health and physical health. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, 17 (1), 57-63. doi: 10.1177/1078390310393737
The inextricable nature of mental and physical health: Implications for integrative care.
This article provides evidence that physical health problems are caused and exasperated by psychological factors and psychological distress leads to physical disease. It argues that new approaches are needed to assure adequate professional knowledge of behavioral health at basic licensure, to increase the use of advanced practice psychiatric–mental health nurses in primary care set¬tings, to identify and teach behavioral competencies for primary care providers, and to fund the design and evaluation of integrative models of care.
Keywords:
primary care
health care reform
primary health care
mental health systems
hospitals
health services
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Weiss, S., Haber, J., Horowitz, J., Stuart, G., & Wolfe, B. (2009). The inextricable nature of mental and physical health: Implications for integrative care. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, 15(6), 371–382. doi: 10.1177/1078390309352513