Patients' reactions to psychiatric consultation

L. M. Koran, J. Van Natta, J. R. Stephens and R. Pascualy

Physicians are often concerned that patients will resent a request for psychiatric consultation. To investigate this problem, 60 patients undergoing psychiatric consultation in a general hospital were inverviewed 24 hours after the consultation. Nearly two thirds of these patients believed that the consultation was beneficial. Patients' attitudes were independent of their demographic characteristics, reason for referral, and hospital service involved. Patients with long-term illnesses more often had positive attitudes than patients with short-term illnesses. Patients who were initially hostile or ambivalent usually had positive attitudes 24 hours later. Substance abusers and patients who denied clearly recognizable psychiatric disorders often did not value the consultation. Even so, their physicians frequently believed that the consultation was useful. We attribute the positive attitudes of patients in our study largely to the referring physicians' preparing them for psychiatric consultation.