ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses a few specific problems from general practice. Somatisation represents the overlap of physical and mental processes in clinical practice, and is one of the most challenging problems in medical practice. Strangely enough, literature on the ethics of mental health is not so easy to find, and especially so literature with relevance to primary care. In matters which concern mental health, morally speaking, is focused on the limits of paternalism as translated into law. If healthcare professionals accept a consistency of harm from smoking, or an overall harm over benefit, they ought to work towards its eradication. The General Practitioner (GPs) position as the point of first access exposes him or her to raw emotions from life crises of all sorts. I. McWhinney has even suggested that general practice is the only specialty to: transcend the dualistic division between mind and body.
