[Psychological disorders and environmental pollution].

In the past years Environmental Medicine has established itself in the departments of community medicine. The clients of these health offices as well as those attending other Environmental Outpatient Departments and who suffer from anxiety in connection with environmental pollution show increasingly psychomatic and even psychiatric disturbances. This paper demonstrates, from the psychiatrists as well as the environmental physicians point of view, the relationship between psychological disturbances and environmental pollution in a typical case-history. The differentiation between possibly toxically induced symptoms and psychologically caused symptoms will be made clear. The aim of this interdisciplinary paper is to contribute towards reducing contact anxiety between Psychiatry und Environmental Medicine also to reduce the clients' fears of psychiatrisation and thus to facilitate therapeutic intervention.