European consultation-liaison services and their user populations: The European Consultation-Liaison Workgroup collaborative study

The authors identified variations in the characteristics of patients referr ed to 56 consultation-liaison (C-L) services in II European countries. The authors found differences in the types of patients referred to the services , and there were significant differences between countries. The first diffe rence lays in whether services saw patients for deliberate self-harm and fo r substance abuse. German psychosomatic C-L services saw virtually no such patients, although in other C-L services these patients constituted one-qua rter to one-third of the patients referred The second difference lays in th e remaining group of referred patients. This group is best characterized by two dimensions. One describes the severity of psychopathology - ranging fr om organic mental conditions to somatization. The other describes the clari ty of the physical diagnosis - ranging from patients referred by surgical w ards to those referred by general medicine and neurology wards.