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The Temperament and Preparation of the Consultant

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Handbook of Psychiatric Consultation with Children and Youth

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Abstract

Lipowski (1974, 1975) defined medical consultation by psychiatrists as “the provision of expert advice on the diagnosis, management, and prevention of mental disorders by specially trained mental health professionals at the request of other health professionals and within the constraints of available knowledge and techniques.” He believes the liaison psychiatrist acts as an interpreter and bridge builder between two conceptual domains and professional groups. Gerald Caplan (1970) wrote of mental health consultation in other settings as well, stating that consultation “is used to denote a process of interaction between two professional persons-the consultant who is a specialist, and the consultee, who involves the consultant’s help in regard to a current work problem with which he is having some difficulty and which he has decided is within the other one’s area of specialized competence. The work problem involves the management or treatment of one or more clients of the consultee, or the planning or implementation of a program to cater to such clients.” Caplan distinguished other activities such as supervision and education and collaboration and noted some characteristics of mental health consultation:

  1. 1.

    The consultant has no administrative responsibility for the consultee’s work or professional responsibility for the outcome of the patient’s care.

  2. 2.

    The consultee is under no compulsion to accept the consultant’s ideas or suggestions.

  3. 3.

    The basic relationship between the two is coordinate. There is no built-in hierarchical authority tension.

  4. 4.

    The coordinate relationship is fostered by the consultant’s usually being a member of another profession and coming briefly into the consultee’s area from the outside.

  5. 5.

    Consultation is usually given in a short series of interviews.

  6. 6.

    Consultation is expected to continue indefinitely.

  7. 7.

    A consultant has no predetermined body of information to impart. He responds only to the current work difficulty. The consultant does not seek to remedy other areas of inadequacy in the consultee. He expects other issues to be raised in further consultations.

Advice must be judged by its results

Cicero

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Authors
  1. Norman R. Bernstein
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  2. H. Donald Dunton
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Norman R. Bernstein M.D. (Professor of Psychiatry) (Professor of Psychiatry)

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University of Miami, Miami, Florida, USA

    James Sussex M.D. (Professor and Chairman) (Professor and Chairman)

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© 1984 Spectrum Publications, Inc.

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Bernstein, N.R., Dunton, H.D. (1984). The Temperament and Preparation of the Consultant. In: Bernstein, N.R., Sussex, J. (eds) Handbook of Psychiatric Consultation with Children and Youth. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-6704-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-6704-8_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-011-6706-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-6704-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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