Best Practices for Treating Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders | Part I: Primary Care and Hospital Settings

Mental health and substance use disorders are common, recurrent, and treatable, yet the most effective methods for addressing these issues are not always apparent or implemented. Our expert public health research team recently completed a comprehensive literature review on best practices for treating mental health and substance use disorders as part of a larger set of recommendations for a coordinated behavioral health system in Boulder County.  Because cross-system collaboration is critical to effectively coordinating treatment for people with behavioral health issues, our recommendations were grounded in literature on best practices in service provision and care coordination across multiple systems.

Through our research it became apparent that the impact of these findings extend well beyond our recommendations in Boulder County and can aid practitioners in delivering appropriate services to people in need of treatment in a variety of settings.

In the coming weeks, we will share the findings from our literature review in a five-part series that focuses on best practices across the following service delivery settings: primary care and hospitals, schools, colleges and universities, direct treatment, and law enforcement and jails.

In addition to identifying best practices in select settings, we also identified a set of cross-systems considerations throughout the course of our research. These include:

1.     selecting and implementing evidence-based practices

2.     identifying strategies to combat and reduce stigma associated with behavioral health disorders

3.     setting guidelines for the provision of culturally responsive services to people who identify with racial/ethnic minority groups and/or other underserved communities

This week, we begin our series with a focus on treatment in primary care and hospitals. We encourage readers to consult the full-text literature review, available for download here. We look forward to sharing our important findings with you, by topic area, in the coming weeks.

Treatment in Primary Care and Hospitals

Primary care and hospital settings offer broad, basic healthcare, rather than specialized services, for people often making their first contact with a doctor or nurse. Thus, primary care can be the initial point of contact for many individuals with mental health and/or substance use issues. Research demonstrates that more Americans receive mental health and substance use disorder care from primary care physicians than from specialists (Unützer & Park, 2012).

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