Jinya Cao
Published: 2024-06-11
Total Pages: 82
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Since the deinstitutionalization of major psychiatric centers, general hospital psychiatry has been playing a more and more important role in providing psychiatric services to the public. But more than providing services to psychiatric patients in general hospital settings, general hospital psychiatry also has many other functions, such as providing consultation-liaison(C-L) services to physical patients with psychiatric comorbidity or psychiatric symptoms due to physical conditions. Many models of C-L services are designed to best fit tasks such as making diagnoses and prescribing pharmaceuticals, helping with physical patients’ distressful emotions, making chemotherapeutic interventions, helping with clinical communications between patients and their doctors, and so on. There is a high prevalence of psychiatric comorbidity in general hospital inpatients of various physical departments. Psychiatric comorbidity results in difficulty in clinical communication, longer hospitalization, worse clinical outcomes, and higher costs. However, psychiatric comorbidities are often neglected and untreated. We believe this phenomenon is caused by complex problems including, but not limited to, insufficient recognition, an insufficient invitation for consultation, the clinical challenge of complex multiple comorbidities, and insufficient treatment.