Psychiatry in the Medical Curriculum

Abstract

Dissatisfaction with the role of psychiatry in the medical curriculum is not confined to this subject. It should be examined against a trend to confine scientific education to the preclinical years, the acquisition of technical skills and knowledge of them to the clinical years, and to postpone vocational training for a career in medicine to post-registration. Fragmentation of medicine into numerous specialties has favoured this process and has made it progressively more difficult for the student to learn about patients as persons, adapting to an environment. Psychiatry must not, as another specialty, worsen this situation. There are particular difficulties inherent in psychology and psychiatry for the student as well as for his teachers, and among these has been the profound influence of the concept of biology as a science based on the causal-mechanical principles of physics. Resistances within the student and within his teachers to approaching the patient as a person are outlined and the historical and cultural origins of some of these are suggested. Current practice in teaching psychology and psychiatry is described and an attempt is made to define a series of objectives for the future. © 1963, British Medical Journal Publishing Group. All rights reserved.