Psychiatric Consultation
What is a Psychiatric Consultation?
A psychiatric consultation is a comprehensive evaluation of the psychological, biological, medical, and social causes of emotional distress. Together you and your clinicians will review your current stresses and problems and any past medical or psychiatric conditions. This information, as well as any necessary medical records and laboratory tests, will lead to the formulation of a comprehensive treatment plan.
A psychiatric consultation can help you understand the sources of problems from three points of view: biological (i.e. heredity, hormones, nutrition, physical illness), psychological (i.e. current life stressors, childhood experiences), and social (i.e. cultural differences, family relationships, prejudice). It is this capacity to evaluate the causes of emotional distress from each of these perspectives that makes psychiatry unique. Many people find that a psychiatric consultation gives them a new perspective and hope for the future.
A simple psychiatric consultation takes two to three sessions. To make this short period as productive as possible, please gather together all of your records and recollections of previous treatments before the first session. Part of this process includes filling out a comprehensive patient survey.
A comprehensive psychiatric consultation takes at least four sessions. It may also involve time speaking with previous care providers or other clinicians. Generally, there is some staff time to gather medical records. Also, staff may chart this information graphically so that we can identify patterns of response or partial response (in a Life Chart). Gathering and analyzing this information may take many hours.
Generally, two-thirds of a consultation will be spent reviewing the nature of your problems, their origins, and the course of any previous treatment. The last third of a consultation is devoted to discussing the assessment of your difficulties, and any recommendations they have for treatment.
Many patients are referred for psychiatric consultation by therapists who wonder if psychiatric medications might benefit their patients. A careful evaluation of this question is usually part of psychiatric consultation; however, a consultation is much more than just an assessment of medications. Our commitment as a consultant is to review all the reasonable alternative treatments, their likely benefits, and any possible risks associated with these treatments.