Reprinted from Australian Family Physician Vol. 31, No. 12, December 2002  1119 NEWS AND REVIEWS: Discussion Allied health professionals providing psychological treatments in general practice settings What options are there? Eleanor Jackson-Bowers, BA (SocSci), MNurs, GradDipInfoStud, is ALIA research librarian, Primary Mental Health Care Australian Resource Centre, South Australia. Chris Holmwood, MBBS (Hons), FRACGP, MClinEd, DipRACOG, is former Director, Primary Mental Health Care Australian Resource Centre, South Australia. Victoria Wade, BSc, DipAppPsych, MPsych, BMBS, FRACGP, is Director, Primary Mental Health Care Australian Resource Centre, South Australia. BACKGROUND This article is based on a literature review and discussion document developed for the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aging to assist in its deliberations on the structure of the Better Outcomes in Mental Health Program (BOMH). OBJECTIVE This article examines issues regarding the engagement of allied health professionals in the delivery of specific time limited and evidence based counselling interventions in the general practice setting. DISCUSSION Specific issues examined include employment and administrative arrangements, citing of these services, communication between general practitioners and counsellors, as well as clinical supervision and support. A ccess to allied mental health services is one component of the Better Outcomes in Mental Health Initiative (BOMH), which resulted from the 2001 Federal Budget commitment to general practice and mental health. General practi- tioners who have completed Level 1 Mental Health training and are eligible to receive Service Incentive Payments will be able to refer their patients to allied health professionals for time limited psychologi- cal treatment. Implementing this program will require the development of new models of service provision, or the modifi- cation of existing models. Funding will be held by divisions of general practice, with a number of pilot sites around Australia being announced shortly. The pilots will run for 12 months and test models of implementation, which will be extended to all divisions of general practice from mid 2003. Some divisions of general practice have nearly 10 years experience in working with psychologists and other mental health pro- fessionals providing counselling services, using a variety of models of employment, contracting, communication and service support. These activities have been under- taken with specific project funding through the More Allied Health Services (MAHS) Initiative. The accumulated knowledge from these projects, including the experi- ence in the United Kingdom and international peer reviewed literature, highlights a number of emerging issues in establishing primary care counselling ser- vices which have been fully addressed in the literature review on which this article is based. 1 Infrastructure and management As divisions of general practice will be fund holders for this initiative, employ- ment arrangements for the allied health professionals need to be resolved. Several divisions have previously outsourced employment to mental health services. Reasons for outsourcing may include:  insufficient funding for administrative support  lack of expertise with recruitment, induction, and supervision, and  lack of office space. Outsourcing may overcome these short- comings but with the risk of less control over the activities of the allied health employee who then reports to the mental health service rather than to GPs or their divisions. The ultimate responsibility of