During recent years the emergency room of the Grace-New Haven Hospital, where psychiatric consultation is freely available, has become an increasingly important diagnostic, treatment, and referral resource for persons with mental disorders and emotional problems. The fact that during each of the past three years more patients were referred for psychiatric consultation in the emergency room of the hospital than were seen in its psychiatric outpatient clinic points up the sheer magnitude of this patient population. Curious as to whether this phenomenon was restricted to this hospital, one of us (M.S.) conducted an informal survey of 25 large university and county hospitals throughout the country. The results of the survey showed the emergency psychiatric facilities of many to be in a state of rapid growth and change with a number of hospitals having only recently begun new programs to care for the increasingly large patient population receiving emergency psychiatric