Primary Care Team of the Year 2010

Primary Care Team of the Year

Category proudly sponsored by:

Recognising practices that demonstrate improved outcomes in disease management.

A new approach to tackle the neglected area of teenage depression by the primary care team at the Lonsdale Medical Centre has led to remarkable improvements in the wellbeing of this part of their patient population.

A partnership between Lonsdale and the Academic Unit of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Imperial College London aimed to deal with the issue of depression among teenagers—a clinical problem that causes considerable morbidity in terms of suffering, social withdrawal, suicidal risk, and, later, psychiatric problems in adulthood.

The people behind what they called the TIDY (therapeutic identification of depression in young people) initiative recognised that this issue was particularly relevant to primary care, because most adolescents with depression seek help for common physical problems, and their emotional distress can go unrecognised.

The team developed techniques to use in routine consultations to screen for emotional distress. If emotional problems were found, they provided information and advice about how to cope with them. The techniques were based on evidence based treatments such as cognitive therapy but were adapted to the primary care consultation, so that they could be delivered during a standard 10 minute consultation.

After an initial pilot for feasibility, in 2008, the practice decided to extend and formally test the project with all patients attending the practice aged 13-17 years. GPs and practice nurses were trained to identify distress and depression, and after the tests the clinicians said that the programme had improved their skills, improved the patients’ wellbeing, and given the young people techniques to cope with depression in the future.

Dr Lisa Miller, executive partner at Lonsdale, says: “We believe more can be done to improve diagnosis and management of teenage depression in primary care, and we have developed tools to help with this.

“Winning this award helps to raise the profile of teenage depression in the primary care setting and raise awareness of the programme.”