Preventive psychiatry in medical curriculum

Abstract

Mental and behavioral disorders are responsible for 7.4% of the total disease burden. Even with optimal care and service delivery, <30% of the burden of disease attributable to mental disorders can be averted, making a strong case for an increase in preventive efforts in psychiatry and mental health promotion. Clinicians can play an important role in implementation of preventive interventions. To carry out these important preventive skills, the training of the future physicians and psychiatrists should incorporate mental health prevention and promotion in the medical curriculum. Although preventive aspects of mental health have been included in the medical curriculum for undergraduates and postgraduates, most of the emphasis during training is on the curative aspects. In this article, various ways of enhancing mental health prevention and promotion component in the undergraduate and postgraduate medical curriculum have been discussed.

Keywords

• Medical curriculum
• mental health
• postgraduate
• prevention
• promotion
• undergraduate