The Modena Consultation–Liaison Psychiatry Service, Italy

Abstract

The Reform Law 180, approved in Italy in 1978, had – and still has – great national and international significance for its dramatic consequences on both clinical and health organisational aspects of psychiatry: the law, in short, had the great effect of bringing psychiatry back to medicine, to the community and to the general hospital. This was the starting point of other relevant events, one of which was the establishment of the specialty of consultation-liaison psychiatry in Italy (Cazzulloet al, 1984). Since then, consultation-liaison psychiatry has gradually developed worldwide and in Italy as a super-specialised branch of psychiatry, able to put into practice – to operationalise – the great psychosomatic tradition in its three interrelated strands of clinical, teaching and research activities. The report that follows is strongly influenced by this historical background.