It begins with a couple of simple screening questions. Besides health questions, patients are asked if they've been depressed in the last two weeks, for instance. The primary care providers are trained in what to look for and what to do next in this team approach to whole-body care, Reiss-Brennan said.

Heather Craghead told her experience as a patient who has suffered. When she was pregnant, she fell into a mind-numbing depression. It was a general practice doctor who helped her get the mental health support she needed, and it is to him she turns when things don't feel quite right. He helps her, working with the team integrated within his clinic, she said.

"If you don't have a mental health care manager, I would say get one for your patients," she told those at the retreat. "It really works."

The integration is a fairly new thing. Durham likens it to where medicine was in terms of dealing with infectious diseases 100 years ago — somewhere between discovery of infection and the development of antibiotics. "I think the 21st century is where we will come to know a lot more," he predicts.

---

E-mail: lois@desnews.com