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Primary mental healthcare: a scoping review372relatively small patient group. The publications indicate that current GP care is often of an insufficient standard, as reflected in underdiagnosis of MHDs, overmedication, and lack of effective patient follow-up. Gaps are identified regarding effective training programmes for GPs, applicable guidelines and tools, optimal collaborative mental healthcare, and corresponding payment models. Opportunities for improvement are seen in prioritising and investing in bridging these gaps. This requires the involvement not only of care professionals and scientists, but also of policymakers. Strengths and limitationsThe first strength of this review is that a robust and widely accepted scoping review method19 was used to provide a solid overview of the existing knowledge on GP care for patients with both ID and MHD. Secondly, only publications from countries where GPs have a gatekeeper role were included. This results in recommendations that can improve not only the quality of GP care, but the total of mental healthcare for patients with ID. Finally, to prevent dispersion of the results of an already broad research question, we focused on adults and thereby give attention to a vulnerable group that is potentially more overlooked than children.This review also has limitations. Firstly, a lack of consistency was found in the definition of ID, as many publications did not supply a clear definition of it. This limitation reflects the heterogeneity of the patient group, and results should be interpreted accordingly. Secondly, the publications retrieved in the grey literature search are presumably not perfectly complete, despite the use of the ‘Grey Matters’ tool21 and checking references lists. Some publications were not accessible for the research team, and publications could have been missed due to the great diversity of possible sources. Comparison with existing literatureThe results of this review indicate that patients with ID constitute a small group within the GP population, accounting for the low priority of this group in education and research. 58, 70 However, this claim regarding the proportion of patients is debatable. In the Netherlands, it is estimated that 6.4% of the population have a mild ID. 1 Research in primary care data shows that no more than 0.56% of GPs’ clients are registered as having an ID. 23, 34 This Katrien Pouls sHL.indd 37 24-06-2024 16:26