OBJECTIVE Scientific interest in emergency psychiatric patients has increased significantly over the last two decades. Nevertheless, current knowledge of this group of patients in the setting of an interdisciplinary emergency department is surprisingly low. METHODS A retrospective examination of all ambulatory psychiatric emergency contacts in the emergency room of a regional hospital in 2015 took place. RESULTS Solely F4 diagnoses accounted for 48.1 % of all first-time patients. Female patients younger than 25 years used the ER twice as often as their male control-group. Almost half of all outpatients fulfilled no emergency criteria. CONCLUSIONS There are specific age and gender differences. The proportion of patients without any emergency criteria was surprisingly high. More scientific research is needed in order to scrutinize this possible inappropriate use of an ER by psychiatric patients.