In this episode we talk to Daniela Strelchuk from Population Health Sciences at the University of Bristol and Professor Stan Zammit from the Centre for Academic Mental Health, also at Bristol.

The paper is: Identifying patients at risk of psychosis: a qualitative study of GP views in South West England

Read the paper: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp20X713969

Previous research has shown that GPs have limited knowledge about the insidious symptoms of psychosis but little is known about the difficulties that GPs face in identifying patients at risk of psychosis. This study used semi-structured interviews to explore GPs’ experiences of this patient group, and found that some GPs were not familiar with the concept of being at risk of developing psychosis.

Whereas this could, in itself, be a barrier to identifying these patients, other barriers were present that related to patients not consulting or disclosing psychotic symptoms, lack of continuity of care, and high thresholds for accessing secondary care services.