The educational challenge of consultation-liaison psychiatry

The authors examine issues related to quality of psychiatric consultation-liaison education programs on the basis of data from the fiscal year 1975 NIMH review of grant proposals for 71 such programs. This category received the lowest percentage of approval (31 approved, 40 disapproved), which is seen as a reflection of the state of development of the field. Although this is a difficult field in which to teach and practice, the authors feel that the numbers and quality of consultation-liaison programs will grow over the next 10 years and that the proliferation of training programs for primary care physicians and the return of psychiatry to the mainstream of medicine will facilitate this growth.