Collaboration médecins généralistes – psychologues : où en est-on ?

A symposium organised in 2012 by the F.P.S Public Health, entitled “General practitioners and psychotherapists: health collaborators?” highlighted a desire for collaboration between general practitioners and psychologists, without being able to define the content or methods. Definitions of collaboration remain very vague and variable. The Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaboration defines collaboration as a practice in which health professionals work with other health professionals, the patient and his/her family. We could also define interprofessional collaboration as a system and practice of communication between different health professionals working together on the basis of common action. Thus collaboration cannot be dissociated from these actors, nor from its form, nor from its objective. The latter must be defined in terms of means, public health and population. Collaboration between general practitioners and psychologists is still at the draft stage in terms of operationality: the various studies do not allow us to bring an operational dimension to collaboration by answering the following five questions: Who are the actors of the collaboration? Why do they collaborate? How does the collaboration take place? Who is the beneficiary? And for what purpose(s) do they collaborate?