Consultation-liaison psychiatry is a branch of the profession which is in rapid development. Generally the question is being raised, whether the consultation- liaison activities should be limited to the strictly medical world, compared to the wider area of mental health professionals. The author adheres to the latter. This is illustrated by experiences from six widely different consultation- activities.
Important to this kind of work are not only the type of patients and consultees; especially the setting in which patients are being treated and consultees are working does matter. This is the so-called situation-approach, which ideally requires a kind of situation-diagnosis of the setting, before the psychiatrist starts with his consultation. Finally, the characteristics required of the psychiatrist to do this work are described.