Opinion | By March 28, 2007 | By Shaheen E Lakhan, MS, MEd, PhD, MD | 5 Comments

Difficulties Teaching Mental Health in Med School: We Need More Answers!

From our previous discussion, Scott (a commentator) proposed a very interesting basis for the disparity of mental health management in contemporary health care: lack of medical training on the subject. Typically, mental health disorders are covered in a short course in the classroom training of medical students. Then, in the hospital, medical students learn clinical aspects of mental health in psychiatry and other rotations (e.g., emergency medicine). Also, general pharmacology for medical students covers anti-psychotics, antidepressants, and anxiolytics (drugs to relieve anxiety) generally across a few lessons. Given the high prevalence of mental illness, certainly many topics in medicine are disproportionately lectured. Read more →