Description of the patients initially attended by the medical area at Emergencies service that later required psychiatric assessment.

Retrospective review of the clinical histories of the previous three months (July to September) using Hospital Ramon Cajal's history software. Data were analyzed using the SPSS software 15.0 version.

55 patients were assessed, 25 male and 30 females, with an average age of 34 years old. Many of the patients were frequent users of our Emergencies service: almost half of the patients (45%) had already come between 2 and 5 times, and only 11 of them (20%) had never been there before. 74% of these patients were already receiving psychiatric care in their ambulatories.

The most frequent cause of consulting were suicidal attempts (50’9%) and drug abuse (18’2%). Up to 56’4% needed to continue been attended by a psychiatry ambulatory, 20% required hospitalization at the psychiatric unit and only 5’5% of the patients did not need any psychiatric care.

The medical area in our Emergency Service is well trained in recognizing psychiatric symptons, that is the reason why around 95% of the patients of our study needed psychiatric treatment.

Sucidial attempt is the typical case in which it is necessary a close collaboration between different medical areas that work in the Emergency service.