The care for mentally handicapped people broke away from psychiatry during the last 25 years and developed an identity of her own. After years of separation the demand for psychiatric help and bridging the gap between psychiatry and the care for the mentally handicapped is growing again. This bridge is urgently needed as there are more behavioural disorders in a population of mentally handicapped and in a population of psychiatric patients there is more mental handicap than in the general population.

The writers investigated the work of psychiatric consultants in the care for the mentally handicapped in the Netherlands. They report on their findings. The care for the mentally handicapped is in need of more psychiatrists, more interest of psychiatrists and more help of psychiatrists who are trained better for this specific task.