Medical and surgical consultations to a general hospital psychiatric unit

This study reviews 563 medical and surgical consultations to a general hospital psychiatric unit over three years. In addition to an analysis of the consultations by service and month, consulted patients are compared with nonconsulted patients by age, sex, and diagnosis. Parallels are drawn to psychiatric consultations are reported in the consultation-liaison literature to medical and surgical patients. Two important findings from the present study are that depressed patients received significantly (P less than 0.01) fewer consultations than expected, and that 49% of one year's consultations were for active medical problems not related to the reason for psychiatric admission.