The burden of behavioral emergencies: need for specialist emergency services.

Behavioral emergencies constitute an important component of medical emergencies. Psychiatric emergency services, which handle the bulk of behavioral emergencies, are inadequate to meet the burden. Strategies to deal with them are also hampered by the lack of adequate research and availability of data. Since behavioral emergencies may present differently in different groups, requiring differing management, consensus guidelines need to be arrived at for tackling behavioral emergencies. In addition, training professionals for psychiatric emergency services should form a part and parcel of emergency management services.