Consultation psychiatry in a Japanese general hospital: patients referred to psychiatric consultation.

A total of 164 (47%) out of 350 new psychiatric patients in a general hospital in Japan were those referred to psychiatric consultation. In 47% of the cases, concurrent physical and psychiatric disorders were reported. In the referred patients, neurosis (38%) was the most common psychiatric disorder, followed by other nonorganic psychoses (9%), schizophrenic psychoses (8%), alcoholic psychoses (8%), transient organic psychotic conditions (7%), affective psychoses (6%) and others. The high frequency of psychiatric emergency cases (23%) including cases with suicide attempts (12%) indicated that psychiatrists play an important role in psychiatric emergency crisis intervention in the general hospital emergency service. In suicide attempts, depression was most prominent, but schizophrenic psychoses were also involved in a third of the cases.