Primary care and psychotherapy are in some ways worlds apart. Yet both deal with the same human fundamentals: birth, and death, hope and disappointment, identity and uncertainty. This innovative book looks at how psychotherapists can make use of their skills in primary care. It examines how therapists, family physicians and other primary care professionals can all learn from each other through clinical collaboration. Each chapter describes a different practical approach to joint working in a range of primary care settings, across the life cycle. Specific topics include services for children and adolescents, working with immigrants, and live supervision. All the authors are connected with the Tavistock Clinic, and are psychotherapists or family physicians. The book challenges psychotherapists and those who work in primary care to develop closer working relationships, so that they can deliver more effective and more equitable services.

'The book reflects a distinctiveness and also an immense diversity of attitude and approach arising out of the thinking and experience gathered in each department of the Clinic over the years. The respective authors each psychotherapeutically trained and each engaged, in different ways, with primary care, focus on a range of community settings in which the complex needs of patients and practitioners challenge known or standardised ways of going about things.'- Margot Waddell, from the Preface

John Launer is on the senior staff of the Tavistock Clinic in London, the leading training institute in the UK for psychological treatment, and is the Associate Dean for postgraduate medical education at the University of London. He is a doctor and family therapist, and a renowned medical columnist both nationally and internationally.