What is Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry?

Consultation-liaison psychiatry (CL psychiatry) is the subspecialty of psychiatry that focuses on the interface between general medicine and psychiatry. CL psychiatrists complete an additional fellowship after medical school and general psychiatry residency.

The role of the CL psychiatrist is to see patients who have both psychiatric and medical symptoms and diagnoses. For some patients, this means that their illness affects both their mind and body. For others, the treatment of their condition causes psychiatric symptoms such as insomnia or changes in their mood. Instead of leaving patients to try to tease out what is causing what, and being bounced back and forth between medical and psychiatric clinicians, CL psychiatrists are experts at seeing the overall picture, finding underlying diagnoses, and helping to coordinate your care.

Within CL psychiatry, some physicians further specialize in areas such as psycho-oncology, reproductive psychiatry, transplant psychiatry, ICU psychiatry, burn and trauma psychiatry, infectious disease, pain medicine, and palliative care.

We are specialists not only in distinguishing the cause of your symptoms, be it medical, psychiatric, or both, but also in working with other medical specialists to improve your health to the fullest extent.

Consultation - liaison psychiatrists recognize the reality that the mind and body are not separate entities, and with their advanced knowledge and skills, they treat patients as they are, wholly integrated human beings with diverse manifestations of illnesses.