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NEW YORK– The REACH Institute trains primary care clinicians to include more mental health assessment and management in their practices, Dr. Lawrence V. Amsel said during an interview at the psychopharmacology update held by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Many primary care clinicians don’t feel adequately trained to interview patients, guage their mental status, and then act on the findings by treatment or referral. But over the past decade, psychiatrists have developed and validated several tools that are appropriate for a primary care practice, said Dr. Amsel, a clinical psychiatrist at Columbia University in New York, and a faculty member of the REACH Institute, a New York–based nonprofit focused on disseminating mental health skills to primary care clinicians, teachers, parents, and others. The program also tries to make clinicians comfortable prescribing psychiatric medications and links them with psychiatrists who can provide consultations when needed.
“It’s kind of like a psychiatrist extender,” when a psychiatrist consults with several primary care clinicians, which allows for improved psychiatric care of many more patients, he said.
Dr. Amsel is on the faculty of the REACH Institute.
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