The Psychiatric Emergency

Introduction The purpose of this paper is to review the Psychiatric Emergency Consultation Service at University Hospitals over a 6-month period, from July 15, 1958, to Jan. 15, 1959. All emergency consultations seen by the Psychiatric Service are recorded in an Emergency On-Call book. During the 6-month period reviewed, there were 378 psychiatric emergencies recorded in the On-Call book. The original recorded for each consultation was reviewed, as was all additional University Hospitals data, if existing, for each emergency patient. This included outpatient charts and hospital records. There is a paucity of data concerning psychiatric emergencies as a group. Studies have been reported of psychiatric consultation in general hospitals, but these studies either did not consider the emergency aspect of the situation per se¹or did not include outpatient consultations.²Descriptions of other psychiatric emergency clinic set-ups do exist but no published data on their