Medical students often seek help when they or someone they know is going through a medical issue. But when it comes to mental health, they remain hesitant to approach the professionals. Sometimes it is due to stigma; sometimes it is just not knowing where to begin. Academic pressure, examinations, long study/work hours, and the demands […]
EDITORIALS
Ars Longa, Vita Brevis
No other profession demands longer learning than the medical profession. Even after years of undergraduate education, postgraduate training, and all the countless exams, medical training is still incomplete. If one is to keep the edge, they always need to be revising old knowledge and updating themselves with recent advances. In many ways, education continues long […]
Archiving of the Documents Related to Psychiatry and Psychiatry Education in India
The history of Psychiatry is rich in the Indian Subcontinent. Numerous records point out the fact that Psychiatry held an important position in the medical system practised in India. A rich trail of documents exists charting out the development of psychiatry and psychiatry education in India. But are those documents being preserved for posterity? With […]
Personality Disorder: The Patients Psychiatrists Dislike by Dr. Priyash Jain
She brushed off the suicide attempt with a casual air, terming it as part of a larger pattern of impulsive behaviour that came under the ambit of borderline personality disorder. As if such an impulsive attempt did not count as a suicide attempt. As if such impulsivity was to be taken with a grain of […]
What’s in a name?
Shakespeare worked his way through my mind as I pondered over the question that my student had posed to me. “What difference does it make if I call my patient a schizophrenic or a person with Schizophrenia? Aren’t they both the same?” I knew the answer, but this time the question gnawed its way to […]
PG Preparation or Clinical Training: Must We Choose? – by Dr. Priyash Jain
Over the past few years, I have seen a remarkable increase in the number of MBBS seats in medical institutions across India. With this precipitous rise, the competition for the PG entrance exams has intensified significantly. It is now fairly common to see medical students starting their preparations for the entrance exams right from the […]
Looking Inwards to Close the Mental Health Treatment Gap – By Dr. Priyash Jain
At any given time, one in ten adults in India experiences one or more mental health conditions. Despite this significant burden, the self-reported treatment gap as per the National Mental Health Survey 2016 remains alarmingly high at 84.5%. The treatment gap is highest for substance use disorders (91%, excluding tobacco use disorder) and lowest for […]
Gleanings from IToP National Conference
The medical field finds itself in a new landscape today. Patients do not just want to be diagnosed and prescribed for the illnesses they have. They want to be heard, understood, and engaged with as a human being. And nowhere is this paradigm shift more palpable than in Psychiatry. With this broader theme in mind, […]
Editorial – A New Chapter
As we reflect on how psychiatry has evolved over the decades, the story of schizophrenia offers a poignant example. Our understanding of the disorder has come a long way since late 19th century when Emil Kraepelin first suggested the term Dementia Praecox to denote the disorder. Not much later in the early 20th Century, Eugene […]
Adolescents and the toxic-echo-chamber of the cyberworld.
Volume 14 Issues 2 February, 2024 January 1, 1983, marks the official birthday of the Internet. As I write this, about 70% of the world’s population uses the Internet, and nearly half is engaged in social media. The digital world’s rapid growth is alarming, especially among youth. According to UNICEF, nearly 71% of the online […]