Establishment of closer links with medicine in clinical work, research and teaching represents a major achievement of psychiatry in this century. Development of general hospital psychiatry has played a key role in this regard. Numerous studies quoted in this article have documented a large overlap between psychiatric and physical morbidity in the community and in all health care settings. These findings argue most strongly in favour of continued efforts to expand all activities at the interface of psychiatry and medicine, with truly integrated health care as the ultimate goal.