The Psychiatric Consultation as an Experience in Group Process

ONE KIND OF EMERGENCY in a general hospital setting, by far the most common, is the request for psychiatric consultation. This has as its aim the restoration of ward equilibrium by enabling the ward staff to perform their healing functions or by transferring the problem patient to a more appropriate facility. Unlike the traditional psychiatric consultation, which aims at diagnosis and recommendations for treatment based on evaluation of the individual patient, this type of consultation takes into account problems that arise among members of the hospital staff as well as the family and community members interacting with the patient. Disruption of this small but complex group, with the patient as its identified central element, becomes the object for reparative intervention by an outside agency, set up in a facility, called the Hospital Liaison Psychiatry Service (HLPS). HLPS intervention is the first step toward the restoration of mature collaboration, and the acceptance of realistic limitations within a hierarchical dependency culture.1

In this paper we describe some aspects of more complex