Family physicians are an important source of mental health care

Headnote

Graham Center One-Pager

Headnote

While comprising about 15 percent of the physician workforce, family physicians provided approximately 20 percent of physician office-based mental health visits in the United States between 1980 and 1999. This proportion has remained stable over the past two decades despite a decline in many other types of office visits to family physicians. Family physicians remain an important source of mental health care for Americans.

According to the Institute of Medicine, mental health care is indivisible from primary medical care. Family physicians and general practitioners (FP/GPs) provide more officebased primary medical care than any other medical...