Actualización clínica de la psiquiatría de interconsulta y enlace

Abstract

Consultative and liaison psychology is the combination of clinical, research, education, and dissemination work done by a general hospital's psychiatry department together with other groups or departments from different medical specialties. Its purpose is to design programs and clinical strategies able to optimize the comprehensive management of medical problems. It is closely linked to psychosomatic medicine, which deals with the relationships between psychological and social phenomena and physiological functions and the role of biological and psychosocial factors in the development, progression, and resolution of all of these diseases, as well as a biopsychosocial approach to patient care. Psychosomatic disorders are disorders with physical symptoms but without enough organic injury to justify them; they include functional disorders and somatic symptom disorders. Psychiatric morbidity is highly prevalent in patients with medical disorders and psychiatric comorbidity. It has a big impact on physical disease, as it is a risk factor for organic diseases themselves. The current clinical practice guidelines offer a series of recommendations to optimize consultive or liaison psychiatry.