We do not have the GP ID (at least not for now), so we cannot link it to a specific doctor or clinic. However, we do have the municipality of the patients, so we could do some location-based stuff.

The findings highlight the need to strengthen mental health training in primary care. Our data suggests that primary care physicians are already delivering critical mental health care, which require more resources and support than they may currently receive. \end

The volume of mental health encounters equals or exceeds those for infections, cardiovascular, and respiratory conditions. Primary care physicians have about three times more mental health visits than they do for pain or injury-related issues.

Why does this matter? Primary care physicians (aka., general practitioners) are often the first point of contact for mental health care. They aren’t just treating physical ailments; they're at the frontlines of depression, anxiety, and many other mental health challenges.

We find that nearly half (47.4%) of the eligible population had a visit with primary care relating to psychological problems over the 14 year study period. However, the number of encounters per person varied, with 10% of patients accounting for over half (54.9%) of encounters.

From the physician's point of view, one third of mental health encounters involved depression (23.8%) or anxiety (14.1%), followed by sleep disturbances (12.1%), substance abuse (8.3%), acute stress reactions (7.1%), psychosis (6.9%), and dementia/memory problems (5.4%).

Mental health concerns included the full range of psychological difficulties: Children were most likely to attend primary care for sleep disturbances, continence issues and ADHD; adults for depression; and older adults for memory difficulties and (again) sleep disturbances.

Mental health was the most common reason for visits among 20 to 35 year-olds. In other age groups, respiratory concerns (0-20), musculoskeletal concerns (35-65), and cardiovascular concerns (65-100) were the most important reasons for encounter.

New paper!📄 We analysed >350 million patient encounters in Norwegian primary care and found that 1/9 visits concern mental health! This is on par with cardiovascular (12.1%) and respiratory (11.0%) complaints, and only outnumbered by musculoskeletal complaints (17.7%)🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

I made a starter pack full of statistical genetics (adjacent) scientists. it covers all flavours of behaviour, psychiatric, social science and population genetics people. One click follow all of em! let me know if I missed key people!