ABSTRACT
On the other hand, general practitioners and physicians working in primary care and medical settings recognize the importance of psychosocial context (e.g. stress, personal resources, coping, social supports, and culture) and their impact on mental health. They prefer not to use mental disorder labels because of the high rates of spontaneous remission and placebo response. They also argue that many people with mild disorders do not improve with antidepressant medication. On the other hand, their symptoms seem to ameliorate with a reduction in psychosocial stress and increased environmental supports. General practitioners are also seriously concerned about the medicalization of all personal and social distress. They argue that the use of symptoms, within the range of normal human emotions, to diagnose mental disorders, without consideration of context, in particular psychosocial hardship, essentially fl ags nonclinically signifi cant distress, especially at lower degrees of severity.
