Liaison psychiatry in an Irish hospital: a survey of a year's experience.

A brief summary of the pattern of mental illness in Ireland is given and the work of a psychiatric consultation-liaison service in a general hospital in the southern part of the country is discussed in this context. The referral rates to the service mirror the referral rates in the United Kingdom more than those in the United States. The high rates of alcoholism and functional psychosis found in referred patients probably reflect the increased prevalence of these conditions in the general community. In Ireland, as elsewhere, the rate of referral of general hospital inpatients to a psychiatric consultation-liaison service is below the rate of psychiatric illness found in hospital inpatients.