Review of consultation psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine. 1. General principles. Psychosom Med

Studies of prevalence of psychiatric morbidity in the nonpsychiatric areas of general hospitals as well as of frequency and patterns of referrals for psychiatric consultation are critically reviewed. Commoner psychiatric diagnostic and man-agement problems encountered on the medical and surgical wards are classified and discussed. The importance of these problems for psychiatric and psychoso-matic theory, as well as their practical implications for training and research, are pointed out. I N PART i of this review73 an attempt was made to outline the scope, organiza-tion, and functions of consultation psy-chiatry in general hospitals. Part II sur-veys the types of diagnostic and man-agement problems encountered by psy-chiatric consultants in the medical and surgical divisions of a general hospital. For clarity of presentation, the writer will first review some studies of the prev-alence of psychiatric illness in this type of hospital and the frequency of and trends in referrals for psychiatric consulta-tion. While such a survey may give some information about the quantitative as-pects of the problem, it can tell little about the manifold quality of psycho-pathological and social phenomena which psychiatrists can observe in