For patients, psychiatric clinics are their first choice when they need psychiatric services. In recent years, a wide variety of psychiatric clinics, from small clinics to multi-functional ones, have developed, and psychiatrists are expected to be coordinators of multi-disciplinary professionals.
 In many clinics, in-house multi-disciplinary teams often consist of psychiatric social workers, psychologists and nurses. Related facilities outside the clinic also employ multi-disciplinary staff, and it is useful to have outside-the-clinic multi-disciplinary staff to be present at the clinical consultation in order to promote cooperation between the clinic and related facilities. The benefit of doing this is that the psychiatrists can obtain information from the outside-the-clinic multi-disciplinary staff in a timely manner and that the outside-the-clinic multi-disciplinary staff can understand the patients better by listening to the interactions between them and the psychiatrist. On the other hand, the downside is that it can be difficult to differentiate confidential information from information that should be shared among all the professionals involved. Close cooperation and collaboration with the local pertinent facilities require contact over the phone, and for this purpose, having in-house psychiatric social workers is useful.
 In contrast, if the multi-functional clinics can serve as the core of the local network for psychiatric services and welfare, they can help patients who could not be discharged previously, and help with their transition into the community. Psychiatry today is more community life-oriented rather than hospitalization-oriented, and multi-functional psychiatric clinics are bridging inpatient care and outpatient care, taking on a new form. Psychiatrists at clinics need to incorporate the perspectives of multi-disciplinary staff, and improve the functions of the clinic.
 ＜Author's abstract＞