The relationship of psychosomatic medicine to consultation-liaison psychiatry.

Consultation-liaison psychiatry arose in the mid-1960s from the matrix of psychoanalytically oriented psychosomatic medicine. The influence of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically trained academic psychiatrists gradually waned. The liaison aspect of consultation-liaison psychiatry faded in the early 1980s, and most consultation-liaison services are now primarily high-quality consultation services that contribute much to university teaching hospitals. The consultation-liaison service at the University of New Mexico (UNM) and several others have eliminated the term "liaison." The consultation service at UNM sees relatively few patients with classic psychosomatic disorders. The majority of requests to UNM's consultation service relate to suicide attempts, delirium, complicated medical problems with psychiatric illness, substance abuse, burns, trauma, and competency evaluations.