Liaison psychiatry is the branch of psychiatry that specialises in the interface between medicine and psychiatry. The liaison psychiatrist uses a wide range of drugs and antipsychotics are among them.

To analyse the prescription of antipsychotics at the liaison psychiatry service of a general hospital.

This is a transversal study. All patients evaluated by the liaison psychiatry service of a general hospital from the 1/01/2012 to the 31/05/2012 were included.

The sample consisted of 128 patients (53’1% women; mean age 65’34±17’18). The majority of them were Spanish (92’2%). Internal Medicine was the service who asked for more psychiatric evaluations, followed by General Surgery (19’5%) and Nephrology (10’2%). The most frequent main complain was depression (46’9%), behavioural disorders (18%) and anxiety (10’2%). The diagnosis given were more often affective disorders (43’8%), delirium (11’7%), psychotic disorders (10’9%) and anxious disorders (9’4%).

Within the 128 patients, 34 (26’6%) did receive antipsychotics during the admission. We compared the two groups (antipsychotic group vs non-antipsychotic group) and obtained the following results: we found that the antipsychotic group more often had behavioural disorders (34’3%) and delusions/hallucinations (20%). A significant increase in delirium diagnose was to be seen (42’9%).

Antipsyhotics are the second most used treatment at the liaison psychiatry service. Patients who receive them are more often affected by delirium and to a minor extent by a psychotic disorder. The first generation antipsychotics such as haloperidol still are the first option. However, the use of second generation antipsychotics is increasing remarkably.