This site began in 2003 to meet the needs of general practitioners who were enrolling in the Better Outcomes in Mental Health Initiative of the Australian Govenment. With the advent of the Better Access initiative that provides Medicare payments to patients treated by psychologists, social workers and occupational therapists, it has become an important way to provide a common framework for the work of these professional groups as they treat people with the common mental disorders. It comprised three distinct parts:

1. A list of common symptoms and the diagnoses in which they featured; a list of the ICD-10 diagnostic features for each disorder; and an outline of the management strategies likely to prove helpful. These pages were hyperlinked with each other and with the next section on focussed psychological strategies. The content of the common mental disorders section was amended from a World Health Organization program for primary care physicians.
2. A listing of focussed psychological strategies compiled by the Clinical Research Unit for Anxiety and Depression at the UNSW at St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney and the Australian Psychological Society in Melbourne after reviewing the treatment outcome literature. It is a succinct description of the psychological strategies that work and, by default, of the psychological strategies that are not informed by evidence.
3. A list of outcome measures - the K10 measure of psychological distress, the SF12 health state measure and the Health of the Nation Outcome scale or HoNOS. These are supplied in a printer friendly format and are supported by a discussion as to what the scores indicate. There are links to the PHQ9 and GAD7, new scales of value in the depressive and anxiety disorders.

We hope you enjoy this site and find it useful. Please tell us of links that don't work and draw our attention to any typographical errors. You can contact us via the following email address:

comments to: katjab@unsw.edu.au

Gavin Andrews MD, UNSW, 2007