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Chapter 6144on their GP, even for problems of a non-medical nature. These difficulties were often experienced as a burden. Practitioners believed that, if this patient group received appropriate care and support from the (in)formal network, practitioners, and other care professionals, MH problems might be limited at an early stage, the work pressure on primary care practices would decrease, and more intensive forms of MH care could, in some cases, be prevented.Strengths and limitationsThis study has several strengths. Firstly, the focus groups were guided by a topic guide based on four themes that emerged from a previous interview study among patients with MID who received primary MH care. This topic guide was critically scrutinised by both the research team and the study’s advisory group to ensure that practitioners’ perspectives were collected as completely and broadly as possible. By integrating the perspectives of those who received and those who provided the care, valuable information was retrieved to inform research, practice, and policy about opportunities to improve primary MH care for people with MID. Secondly, participants had varying degrees of experience with the patient group and were reasonably equally distributed across the Netherlands. Finally, the focus groups were moderated by a trained researcher who, as an ID physician, could easily relate to the participants’ clinical experiences, thereby adding to the depth of the discussion.The main limitation of this study is that the practitioners’ perspectives may be partly determined by the Dutch primary care model, reducing external validity. However, various countries have comparative primary care models, rendering the suggested implications for research and practice also valuable and applicable outside the Netherlands. Furthermore, in countries with weaker formal primary care systems, professionals working in noninstitutionalised settings with people with both MID and MH will experience many of the problems described here.Comparison with existing literatureOur findings show some similarities with previous qualitative studies focusing on people with MH problems and a wider range of ID than MID. 1, Katrien Pouls sHL.indd 144 24-06-2024 16:26