Work of the clinical psychologist in general practice: preliminary communication.

A randomized, controlled trial to assess the value of a health centre-based clinical psychology service is described. Outcome is measured by means of (1) psychosocial rating scales; (2) drug costs; and (3) the costs of relevant hospital referrals. At the end of the first year, the six general practitioners had admitted 239 patients to the trial and of these 81 had been followed up for 34 weeks after entry. This preliminary report reviews the data obtained from these patients. The main finding is a tendency, which reaches statistical significance at some points, for those patients with access to a clinical psychologist to improve more rapidly on the psychosocial measures than the controls.