General practitioners often used emotional responses for "referrals away" and intellectual decision making for "referral to" in patients with mild depression and/or anxiety.

Methods 2 GPs interviewed participants by asking open ended questions about the interviewees’ management of minor mental illness. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed, and the data were analysed using a grounded theory approach to generate explanatory concepts and categories. The process was iterative; after 23 interviews, no new concepts were generated. The findings were presented to 12 GPs to help assess field validity.