[Psychiatric emergency and somatic disorders]

The authors made a survey in the setting of the Ste Anne hospital Emergency outpatient clinic to determine the incidence of somatic troubles in mental patients during a crisis situation. 1,000 patients were examined during a 24 day period. More than half of somatic problems had not been addressed to priori to Psychiatric consultation. More over, during those psycho-organic troubles, no precise information had been made available in half of the patient population. In 3% of cases, hospitalization could not continue in a psychiatric setting, which points to both the difficulty in assessing the medical capacity of psychiatric institutions ("secteurs") and acceptance of mental patients by the general medical hospital.