Mental Health

Stress affects daily activities, influences the way symptoms are perceived, and detracts from quality of life; it plays a role in everyone’s life and is a component of every illness. The responsibility of the primary care physician is to help manage the stress and recognize when specific therapeutic measures are needed. The fourth edition of The Fifteen Minute Hour presents biopsychosocial approach concepts from the earlier editions of the book and provides new material to make the principles and techniques more useful to primary care health professionals.

Most uncomplicated anxiety disorders can be treated in the primary care setting. Following the initial treatment, patients require ongoing care, which combines psychosocial and psychopharmacological therapies. Treatment of anxiety disorders can lead to improved interpersonal, social, and vocational functioning.

Anxiety disorders are as prevalent and disabling as depression; they affect about 19.1 million adults in the United States at some point during their lifetimes.1-3 Because of the high suicide risk associated with depression, patients who have anxiety may attract less attention from their primary care providers. Thus, anxiety disorders often go undiagnosed and untreated.

The false sensation of bugs crawling on or within the skin is a sensory hallucination commonly associated with psychostimulant drugs. It was first reported in chronic cocaine users in 1889. Patients with this disorder often have self-induced dermatosis caused by intense picking and scratching of the skin.