Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine: The Company They Keep

Objective: The objectives of this review are 1) to briefly describe the parallel historical developments of consulta-tion-liaison (C-L) psychiatry; 2) to analyze the extent to which the literature of C-L psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine relate to each other, given that both fields have evolved simultaneously in the history of psychiatry; and 3) to propose possible explanations for observed publication patterns in selected C-L resources and the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. Methods: The quasi–citation analysis includes two segments: 1) a review of selected key C-L psychiatry references to determine the extent to which classic articles from Psychosomatic Medicine are cited; and 2) an analysis of 60 years of Psychosomatic Medicine, sampling issues from the first 5 years of each decade and all issues of the year 2000 for articles of potential relevance to C-L psychiatry. References to Psychosomatic Medicine articles in C-L resources are tallied as percentages of total references in each source. Articles in Psychosomatic Medicine are assigned to one of three categories (A, B, or C) according to their perceived relevance to C-L psychiatry, from most (A) to least (C) relevant. Results: The review of C-L sources (“basic ” reading lists and reference lists of seminal articles and textbooks) revealed a wide range of Psychosomatic Medicine citations, fro