Patient spirituality, a once disregarded dimension, is emerging in research and clinical care as a relevant factor in mental health. Internationally, psychiatry's professional associations have highlighted the need for developing sensitivity to this life dimension. A growing number of U.S. psychiatric residencies now include training on how to address patient spirituality in clinical care. Quan...

Our friend and colleague Wayne Fenton asked to write this article for the Journal because of his desire to educate other psychiatrists about the treatment of schizophrenia, including what he recognized to be a growing problem with the metabolic syndrome. This lifelong passion, which he pursued from his psychiatry residency at Yale, through his directorship of Chestnut Lodge, to his position at ...

Since I first met Polanyi when I was in psychiatry residency at Duke University (1962-4), his work has exerted a continuing influence on my understanding of psychoanalysis, specifically the branch of psychoanalysis called analytical psychology, founded by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. In the present context, I wish to discuss briefly four areas in which Polanyi’s thought has influenced or d...

The treatment of patients who, due to their clinical presentation, pose potential liability risks to the psychiatrist is one of the more stressful aspects of modern psychiatric practice. The need to educate psychiatric residents about the principles of risk management that guide the safe provision of good patient care in such patients is paramount in the current malpractice environment. In this...

OBJECTIVE The authors discuss the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed for a resident to be competent in supporting and working with families, as mandated by the residency review committee (RRC) core competencies. METHODS The RRC core competencies, as they relate to patients and their families, are reviewed. The Group for Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) presents an operational version of t...

Physician competence is a universal concern, one that Canada and the US have addressed in differing, but also in similar, ways. Focusing on the roles physicians play, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC) has implemented a uniform procedure for developing and assessing competencies. The US does not have a parallel body but has instead different organizations responsible...

How is spirituality relevant to mental health and to the busy practice of medicine? Until recently, a supplement devoted to this question wouid have been highly improbable— owing in part to Sigmund Freud's antireligious bias and to the subsequent focus of American psychiatry on the biologic aspects of mental illness. Consider briefly what has changed: Palliative medicine, which has long valued ...

OBJECTIVE Recent evidence suggests that 25-64 % of psychiatry residents are the victims of assault by patients; only a minority, however, feel they receive adequate safety and violence training during residency. To address this disparity, the author designed, implemented, and assessed the effectiveness of a brief educational intervention focused on improving the residents' ability to recognize ...

Organizing frameworks that affect medical education include requirements for residency education set out by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), board certification requirements of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN), and requirements of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) for awarding continuing medical education (CM...

The authors sought to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of initiating a Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) for alcohol and other drug use curriculum across multiple residency programs. SBIRT project faculty in the internal medicine (traditional, primary care internal medicine, medicine/pediatrics), psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, emergency medicine,...