Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-fqc5m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T14:46:17.269Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Training in community psychiatry — a year's experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Katy Malcolm*
Affiliation:
Northern General Psychiatric Unit, Sheffield S5 7AU
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

As the move towards community based psychiatry gathers momentum, it becomes increasingly important that psychiatrists are adequately trained to take on their changing role in the new model of psychiatric care (Sturt & Waters, 1985; Lancet, 1985). Indeed, it has been recommended that “every psychiatrist should be familiar with the conduct of community psychiatry” (Freeman, 1985). Difficulties arise, however, due to the fact that there is no accepted definition of the practice of community psychiatry (Fink & Weinstein, 1979) let alone well established training programmes designed to equip future community psychiatrists to practise competently. Not surprisingly, few psychiatrists are satisfied with their community psychiatry training. Brook (1981) reported that only 38% considered their community psychiatry to be adequate in quantity and suitably supervised. Even then, their subjective view may not have reflected the actual adequacy of their training. Nevertheless, useful guidelines have been drawn up by the Collegiate Trainees Committee Working Party (Scott, 1988), outlining what would constitute a rounded training programme in community psychiatry. However, there is scant literature evaluating the usefulness of the few existing posts providing such experience

Type
Trainees' Forum
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1989

References

Baxter, S. (1984) Training in community psychiatry. In Psychiatric Services in the Community (eds. J. Reed & G. Lomas). London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Brook, C. P. (1981) Post-graduate psychiatric training. Medical Education, 15, 335359.Google Scholar
Cutler, D. L., Bloom, J. D. & Shore, J. H. (1981) Training psychiatrists to work with community support systems for chronically mentally ill persons. American Journal of Psychiatry, 138, 98101.Google Scholar
Fink, P. J. & Weinstein, S. P. (1979) Whatever happened to psychiatry? The deprofessionalisation of community mental health centers. American Journal of Psychiatry, 136, 406409.Google Scholar
Freeman, H. (1985) Training for community psychiatry. Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 9, 2932.Google Scholar
Leading Article (1985) Psychiatry – a discipline that has lost its way. Lancet, 1, 731732.Google Scholar
Morrison Donovan, C. (1982) Problems of psychiatric practice in community mental health centers. American Journal of Psychiatry, 139, 456460.Google Scholar
Peet, M. (1986) Network community mental health care in North-West Derbyshire. Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 10, 262265.Google Scholar
Scott, J. (1988) Training implications of the shift to community-orientated psychiatric services. Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 12, 151153.Google Scholar
Sturt, J. & Waters, H. (1985) Role of the psychiatrist in community-based mental health care. Lancet, 1, 507508.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.