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Background: An appropriate follow-up is considered essential in the consultation-liaison psychiatry setting, but it is often neglected. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the psychiatric consultation process in the general hospital, by investigating what occurred to patients 3–5 months after discharge. Methods: We used a three-part questionnaire: (1) the results of the consultation process; (2) a telephone interview with patients, and (3) a telephone interview with the patients’ primary care physician, to whom the patients were referred after discharge from hospital. We contacted all consecutive, unselected patients referred to psychiatric consultation from January to July 1999. Complete data were available for 119 patients from an initial group of 318. Results: The consultation process was well accepted by patients and useful to general hospital physicians to complete the final diagnosis of the patient when discharged from hospital. In most cases (78.9%), the psychiatric letter was attached to the discharge letter. The second part of the questionnaire indicated that most patients were satisfied with the consultation process. They thought it helped focus their problems and 60% asserted that they felt better after following their psychiatrists’ instructions or therapy. The primary care physicians agreed with the diagnostic results of the psychiatric consultation, mainly followed the psychiatrists’ advice, and generally expressed positive comments about the consultation-liaison service. Conclusions: Compliance of hospital physicians, patients, and primary care physicians was good. Follow-up studies on outcome of psychiatric consultations are few and further analysis is strongly recommended.

The authors examined 60 consecutive patients hospitalized in Modena University Otorhinolaryngological Clinic for vertigo by means of an interview and of three self-rating scales (Zung’s SDS, SAS and the Middlesex Hospital Questionnaire). The control group was composed of an equal number of patients hospitalized in the same ward and period for different nonsurgical otiatric diseases; the two groups were matched for age, sex, residential area, sociocultural conditions, duration of hospitalization and disease. According to the clinical diagnosis carried out when discharged from hospital, the patients where divided into five groups (Ménière’s disease, neuronitis, vertebrobasilar insufficiency, neurosensorial deafness, nucleoreticular syndrome of Ararslan). The data regarding depression (MHQ and SDS), anxiety (MHQ and SAS), neuroticism, somatization (MHQ) and the prevailing of hysterical personality traits in women (MHQ) resulted particularly relevant from a statistical viewpoint (p < 0.01).

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