Psychiatric Consultation to Inpatients With 'Early-Onset' Type I Diabetes Mellitus in a University Hospital

With the use of medical records and the Consultation-Liaison Outcome Evaluation System, we studied psychiatric consultation to 52 hospitalized patients with type I diabetes mellitus having onset of disease by age 25 years. The distribution of psychiatric diagnoses assigned to this sample of patients with "early-onset" diabetes did not differ from those of patients with other medical and surgical illnesses. Three features did distinguish consultation to patients having type I diabetes: the diabetics were referred unusually early in the hospital course; psychotropics were seldom utilized; and consultants' recommendations for diagnostic studies were not followed in more than 90% of cases. The study indicates that the primary medical diagnosis is a critical variable governing consultees' use of and responses to psychiatric consultation.