A nationwide analysis of 350 million patient encounters reveals a high volume of mental-health conditions in primary care.

ABSTRACT: How many primary-care encounters are devoted to mental-health conditions compared with physical-health conditions? Here we analyzed Norway's nationwide administrative primary-care records, extracting all doctor-patient encounters occurring during 14 years (2006-2019) for the population aged 0-100 years. Encounters were recorded according to the International Classification of Primary Care. We compared the volume of mental-health encounters against volumes for conditions in multiple different body systems. A total of 4,875,722 patients generated 354,516,291 encounters. One in 9 encounters (11.7%) involved a mental-health condition. Only musculoskeletal conditions accounted for a greater share of primary-care physicians' attention. The volume of mental-health encounters in primary care equal

SUBMITTER: Caspi A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11479939 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature