An Advocacy for the Academic Underpinning of Psychiatric Liaison

Abstract

Settings offering services by liaison psychiatry (LP) and associated human resources have increased over the last decades. While the psychiatric consultation activity has grown, the psychiatric liaison (LI) activity, aiming to build a bridge between psychiatric and medical expertise and to transfer knowledge to support clinicians who care for the medically ill, is still doomed to a shadowy and stagnant existence. In this commentary, we focus on the challenges LP, and especially LI are facing and call for a change in perspective to tackle those.