[Facing chronic depression in family practice]

This study focuses on the management of chronic depression at the general practitioner's office and the collaboration between general practitioner (GP)-psychiatrist. Our study's highlights two different situations: patients able to verbalize their psychological suffering and who can be directly referred to the psychiatrist and patients expressing their psychological suffering mainly by physical symptoms. GPs consider they first have to work with their patient to help them connect their somatic symptoms and their psychological suffering, which will allow them to refer their patient to the psychiatrist. If this work does not succeed, the GP remains at the forefront of medical care. Long-term support continues, where the GP sometimes ends up giving up on curing and focusing on the doctor/patient relationship.