ABSTRACT
Atopic eczema, like its cousin childhood asthma, worsens not only with physical stimuli, but also in situations of emotional conflict; the liaison psychiatrist may be involved in alleviating the latter. The liaisonist must treat depression where he finds it. R. S. Medansky, R. M. Handler and D. L. Medansky divide dermatological patients into those whose complaint is part of a primary emotional disorder; those in whom an organic cutaneous problem influences the psychological state; and those in whom organic and emotional factors combine in different degrees to produce symptoms. Psychiatric symptoms in association with infections are sometimes prominent, causing diagnostic or management problems. Delirium may develop at the height of severe infection, and fatigue syndrome and sometimes frank depression may be sequelae. Acute encephalitis complicates mumps, measles and chicken pox, infectious hepatitis and mononucleosis, and in the United States and Russia there are still arthropod-borne epidemics of viral encephalitis. Jakob-Creutzfeldt disease, spongiform encephalopathy, has been shown to be the result of an infection.
