title: Primary care psychiatry: pertinent Arabian perspectives.
abstract: There is substantive evidence of significant psychiatric morbidity among primary care patients, mainly in the form of anxiety and depressive disorders. A careful critical approach is essential for ensuring the cultural relevance, validity and reliability of the psychiatric screening instruments used to identify such morbidity. Most psychiatric morbidity among primary care patients passes undetected by the primary care practitioners. This will inevitably lead to unnecessary investigation and medication and the continuation of suffering for patients. Comorbidity and physical presentation in most instances contribute significantly to failure to detect psychiatric disorders. To deal with this problem of hidden psychiatric morbidity, carefully designed educational and training programmes need to be tailored to address the particular weaknesses and needs of primary care doctors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. elrufaie@uaeu.ac.ae
authors.forename: O E
authors.initials: OE
authors.lastname: El-Rufaie
mesh_terms: D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000208:ethnology; D018912:Arabs / Q000208:ethnology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017281:Cost of Illness; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000208:ethnology; D003951:Diagnostic Errors; D004502:Education, Medical, Continuing / Q000458:organization & administration; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training / Q000458:organization & administration; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000458:organization & administration*; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000208:ethnology / Q000628:therapy; D009017:Morbidity; D010821:Physicians, Family / Q000193:education / Q000458:organization & administration; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D015995:Prevalence; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000458:organization & administration*; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013001:Somatoform Disorders / Q000208:ethnology; D014479:United Arab Emirates / Q000453:epidemiology