Out-patient referrals of major depression to psychiatrists in central Liverpool

Abstract

Psychiatric clinics see 4% of all hospital referrals by general practitioners (GPs), but the literature contains surprisingly little about the referral behaviour of, and the patients referred by, GPs to psychiatrists (Wilkinson, 1989). We describe an analysis of the Royal Liverpool Hospital psychiatric out-patient clinic which serves a deprived inner city population of 125,000 people and its GPs.