The Psychiatric Assessment and Brief Intervention Program: Partnering With Primary Care Providers

Area of Science:

• Psychiatry
• Primary Care
• Mental Health Services

Background:

• Primary care settings often face challenges in providing timely mental health services.
• The Psychiatric Assessment and Brief Intervention (PABI) program was developed to address this gap.
• PABI aims to improve access to diagnostic evaluations and brief, evidence-based treatments for adult medical patients.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the structure and outcomes of the PABI pilot program.
• To evaluate the effectiveness of PABI in improving mental health outcomes for primary care patients.
• To assess the program's ability to provide prompt access and coordinate care.

Main Methods:

• Collected demographic and clinical data for patients seen in PABI from October 2015 to June 2017.
• Utilized descriptive statistics and mixed-effects linear models for data analysis.
• Analyzed changes in behavioral health measure scores from baseline to program completion.

Main Results:

• 139 patients were enrolled, with an average of 2 psychiatric diagnoses each.
• Mean access time was 8 days, and the average length of stay was 11 weeks.
• Significant improvements were observed: Patient Health Questionnaire-9 scores decreased by 5.9 points (P < .0001), and GAD-7 scores decreased by 4.4 points (P < .0001).

Conclusions:

• The PABI program offers prompt, quality mental health care for patients with medical comorbidities.
• Results indicate significant clinical improvements in depression and anxiety symptoms.
• Further research is required to assess the long-term sustainability and generalizability of the PABI model.