Mental Health — Updates Since 2020
Guideline & practice changes since 2020
- Gender-affirming hormone therapy is not specialist-only (AJGP gender and sexual diversity issue, Oct 2026). Upskilled GPs initiate it alongside gender clinics, endocrinologists and sexual health physicians. After 3 months on GAHT, read Hb/Hct, creatinine/eGFR and LFTs against the affirmed gender’s reference range, and say which range you want on the request. Testosterone is not contraception. See Gender Dysphoria.
- Lecanemab is a genuinely new disease-modifying therapy for early Alzheimer’s disease (CLARITY AD trial, NEJM 2023) — not yet PBS-confirmed in Australia. See Dementia & Depression.
- Schizophrenia care now includes a structured cardiometabolic monitoring schedule (weight, waist circumference, lipids, glucose, blood pressure) aligned with EPA guidance, plus explicit QTc action thresholds — reflecting a sharper focus on antipsychotics’ physical-health burden. See Schizophrenia and Psychotropic Adverse Effects.
What was done
The whole category (~40 notes) was reformatted out of Murtagh-derived HTML tables into clean markdown and cross-checked against 23 eTG mental-health topic PDFs plus full-text RANZCP clinical practice guidelines. Six duplicate pairs (generalised anxiety disorder, OCD, panic disorder, schizophrenia, social anxiety disorder, specific phobia) were merged into their canonical pages. See Schizophrenia, which also gained a new antipsychotic-switching section.
New pages added
These topics had zero coverage anywhere on the site before:
-
Acute Behavioural Disturbance — the GP/urgent-care approach to threatening, aggressive or severely agitated presentations: ruling out an organic cause before assuming a psychiatric one, the Sedation Assessment Tool, current eTG oral and intramuscular sedation regimens for adults (diazepam/lorazepam/olanzapine oral; droperidol/olanzapine/midazolam IM), and documentation and least-restrictive-practice requirements under state Mental Health Act legislation.