Liaison psychiatry in an HIV/AIDS unit.

OBJECTIVE

To provide an overview of the work of a liaison psychiatry service to an HIV/AIDS inpatient unit, and particularly to examine the identification of mood and related disorders by referring doctors.

METHOD: The MICRO-CARES prospective clinical database system was used to obtain data on all patients referred to the HIV/AIDS consultation-liaison psychiatry service in an infectious diseases hospital in Melbourne.

RESULTS

Three hundred and ninety-two inpatient referrals were made in the 2 years from 1993-1995: a referral rate of 16.7%. The most frequent reasons for referral were evaluation of coping problems (42%), assessment of possible depression (31%), and assessment of psychotropic medication (24.5%). The most common psychiatric diagnoses were mood disorders (36.5%), psychoactive substance use disorders (22.7%) and organic mental disorders (18.1%). Overall concordance of recognition of depression by the referring doctor and diagnosis of depression by the consultant psychiatrist was 79%; 20% false positive rate, 23% false negative rate.

CONCLUSIONS

Psychiatric comorbidity is common in patients with HIV/AIDS. Reasons for referral vary from those seen in other inpatient settings. Previously noted problems such as the misdiagnosis of psychiatric disorder and the mislabelling of the syndrome recognised by psychiatrists as depression were noted here.