General medicine: psychiatry issues
Psychiatry on the medical ward, covering suicide risk in medical inpatients, drug and alcohol services, how Mental Health Acts work and what they don't authorise, the physical complications of mental illness and its treatments, psychiatric presentations of systemic disease, working with consultation-liaison psychiatry, and the signs of drug use.
Tier 1Topic overview
Written with AI assistance and fact-checked against the sources below. For exam study, not clinical decisions. How notes are made
At a glance
- Up to a third of medical inpatients have a significant psychiatric or substance use problem. It lengthens stays and raises readmissions.
- Mental Health Acts let you detain and treat mental illness against a person's will. They generally don't authorise treatment of physical illness, which depends on capacity, substitute decision-makers or the doctrine of necessity.
- New psychiatric symptoms in a medical patient are delirium until proven otherwise. Look for organic causes before referring.
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Sources
- Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022 (Vic)AU/NZVictorian Government, 2022, in force September 2023
- Mental Health Act 2007 (NSW)AU/NZNSW Government
- Mental Health Act 2016 (Qld)AU/NZQueensland Government, 2016
- Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992 and its replacement, the Mental Health BillAU/NZManatū Hauora, New Zealand Ministry of Health, Replacement bill; check commencement
- Causes of Death, Australia, 2025 (intentional self-harm (suicide) deaths)AU/NZAustralian Bureau of Statistics, 27 October 2026 (2025 preliminary, 2024 revised)
- Closing the Gap Annual Data Compilation ReportAU/NZProductivity Commission, July 2026
- Galletly C et al. RANZCP clinical practice guidelines for the management of schizophrenia and related disorders. Aust N Z J Psychiatry 2016;50:410-72AU/NZRoyal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, 2016
- Equally Well consensus statement: improving the physical health and wellbeing of people living with mental illness in AustraliaAU/NZNational Mental Health Commission, 2016
- RANZCP clinical practice guidelines for the management of deliberate self-harmAU/NZRoyal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, 2016
- Self-harm: assessment, management and preventing recurrence (NG225)National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2022
- Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program. Acute adverse reactions to prednisone in relation to dosage. Clin Pharmacol Ther 1972;13:694-8Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 1972
- Last updated
- 14 November 2026
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