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Primary mental healthcare: care professionals’ perspectives1416Box 6.4. Theme 3: Facilitating and hampering roles of the patient’s network. Practicebased insights that participants in our study deemed to contribute positively to the quality of primary mental health (MH) care for adults with mild intellectual difficulties (MID)ay The practitioner actively involves the patient’s network in the MH trajectory y The practitioner recognises the capacity of the network and provides support, coaching, and psycho-education to the network regarding the patient’s MH problemsy A stable network that provides long-term and consistent support to the patient, both practically and emotionally, is valuable for both the patient and the practitionera For readability, the term practitioner is used for both GPs and MHNPs; when relevant, GP or MHNP is specifiedTheme 4: GPs’ and MHNPs’ challenges to provide care in the healthcare chainParticipants emphasised that, in their practitioner role, they might not always be able to provide the care and support needed by patients with both MID and MH problems, especially when the problems were non-medical in nature or required expertise in MH care. Participants were convinced that timely access to appropriate support and care could limit MH problems and reduce the high demand for services in primary care practices. One participant felt isolated in providing care:Then I’m treating, and I think: I’m here on my own again, but there should be much more happening in the home situation. (F4, GP)Finding appropriate care and support Practitioners felt responsible for organising the necessary care and support for patients, as patients or their network might not be able to do so independently. This additional organisation, coordination, and mediation of care and support required extra effort and time. Challenges mentioned included the participants’ regular network being insufficient, lack of a regional specialised network for this patient group or frequent changes within this network, and regional differences in the organisation of care. Especially regarding context-related problems where solutions lie outside the medical domain, the participants were often not aware how and where the appropriate support was available for their patients. In addition, issues Katrien Pouls sHL.indd 141 24-06-2024 16:26