Primary care Physicians’ perspective on the management of anxiety and depressive disorders: a cross-sectional survey in Emilia Romagna Region

BMC Family Practice

Research Article

Ilaria Tarricone¹  Marco Menchetti¹  Federica Casini¹  Michele Magnani¹  Cecilia Sighinolfi¹  Paola Tedesco¹  Domenico Berardi¹  Niccolò Colombini²  Maria Bologna³  Pier Venanzio Bandieri⁴  Mara Morini⁵  Alberto Serio⁶  Clara Curcetti⁷ 

[1] Institute of Psychiatry, University of Bologna, Viale C. Pepoli 5, IT-40123, Bologna, Italy;Mental Health Department, Local Health Unit Modena, Modena, Italy;Mental Health Department, Local Health Unit Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy;Mental Health Department, Local Health Unit Rimini, Rimini, Italy;Primary Care Department, Local Health Unit Bologna, Bologna, Italy;Primary Care Physician of the Local Health Unit Bologna, Bologna, Italy;Service for Health District, Primary Care, Planning and Development of Health Services, Regional Health Care and Social Authority, Bologna, Emilia Romagna Region, Italy;

关键词: Anxiety;    Depression;    Primary care;    Antidepressants;    Psychotherapy;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2296-14-75

 received in 2013-02-24, accepted in 2013-05-29,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundEvidences from literature suggest that Primary Care Physicians’ (PCPs) knowledge and attitude about psychological and pharmacological treatments of anxiety and depressive disorders could influence their clinical practice. The aim of the study is double: 1) to assess PCPs’ opinions about antidepressants (ADs) and psychotherapy for the management of anxiety and depressive disorders; 2) to evaluate the influence of PCPs’ gender, age, duration of clinical practice, and office location on their opinions and attitudes.MethodsThis cross-sectional multicentre survey involved 816 PCPs working in four Local Health Units of the Emilia Romagna Region. Participating PCPs were asked to complete a questionnaire during educational meetings between October 2006 and December 2008.ResultsThe response rate was 65.1%. Eighty-five percent of PCPs agreed on the effectiveness of ADs for depressive disorder whereas lower agreement emerged for anxiety disorder and on psychotherapy for both anxiety and depression. Forty percent of PCPs reported to feel “very/extremely confident” in recognizing depression and 20.0% felt equally confident in treating it with pharmacotherapy. Considering anxiety disorder, these proportions increased. Female PCPs and those located in the rural/mountain areas reported to adopt more psycho-educational support compared to male and suburban colleagues.ConclusionsOur results suggest that an effort should be made to better disseminate recent evidences about the management of anxiety and depressive disorders in Primary Care. In particular, the importance of psychological interventions and the role of drugs for anxiety disorder should be addressed.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Casini et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.