Liaison psychiatry: a service for averting dehumanization of medicine. Recent psychosocial changes in medicine.
Recent technical advances of medical science have become responsible for the altered role of the physician and changes in the practice of medicine. As the practice has become hospital-centered, the importance of the individual physician and the prestige of the medical profession have markedly decreased. Dehumanization of medicine has been a natural outcome of these changes, for as the scientific approach to patient care increased the psychosocial support of the physician and significant others decreased. Liaison psychiatry, the therapeutic arm of psychosomatic medicine, utilizes the holistic principle which incorporates the psychosocial nuances of human behavior into the medical model. It is felt that this service must be utilized with increased frequency if further dehumanization of medical practice is to be prevented.