Mental health – a phrase we’ve heard countless times, yet often fail to understand truly. In the corridors of medical colleges, where stethoscopes swing and stress levels soar, mental well-being usually becomes the silent casualty of ambition. As medical students, we’re taught to examine, diagnose, and treat the body – but are seldom reminded to […]
Addiction in Advancing Age – Risk Factors and Possible Solutions – By Dr. Anirban Dutta
Psychiatric disorders in the elderly population have been an area overlooked for decades, and within that, addiction is no exception. Use of alcohol, tobacco, illicit substances, and prescription medications is an arena that demands exploration regarding the impact it has on older people, considering the biological and social changes that accompany advancing age. As per […]
Psychiatry Residency in India: Bridging Training Gaps in the NMC Era – By Dr. Ruchi Soni
It has been thirteen years since I walked in the corridors of the psychiatry ward as a junior resident. Back then, psychiatry training happened while walking back and forth from the psychiatry ward to the OPD. There were no specified competencies at that point in time. You learned psychiatry, as Albert Bandura once postulated in […]
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 […]
MINDS Sapiens: Psychiatry Club
The Magic of Young Enthusiastic Doctors!! As a postgraduate teacher, we naturally spend more time in psychiatry training of postgraduates in most medical colleges where both postgraduates and undergraduate medical students are enrolled. Recently, I took a session for first-year MBBS students during the Foundation Programme and introduced them to our Psychiatry Club (MINDS Sapiens), […]
Binge, Scroll, Repeat: Understanding Modern Technology Addiction
Technology use today extends far beyond online gaming, and with it, newer behavioural addictions are becoming increasingly visible. One of the most common patterns is OTT binge-watching, where individuals watch multiple episodes or entire seasons in one stretch. Occasional binge-watching may be harmless, but repeated cycles can disturb sleep, reduce productivity, and lead to social […]
Antidepressants: Myths vs. Facts
Despite the widespread use of antidepressants in modern psychiatric practice, misconceptions and stigma continue to shape patient and professional attitudes alike. These myths not only lead to treatment hesitancy, missed diagnoses, and suboptimal outcomes but also complicate clinical decision-making for young psychiatrists navigating the realities of medication management. In an era of instant online information, […]
AI-assisted CBT: Exploring the future of CBT with AI
Today, as AI is slowly creeping its way into everything we do and proving its usefulness in its own unique ways, it makes sense to explore its utility in providing Cognitive behavioural therapy too. Cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT, is a structured process of understanding a person’s thoughts, questioning them, and restructuring them to break […]
The Art of Being Understood
The first time I sat across a patient as a newly crafted doctor, I realised that the stethoscope, to detect cardiac murmurs, wasn’t the hardest tool to use. Words were.It was a small public healthcare OPD room, the kind where the wall paint has long given up to the invasion of black fungi, and the […]
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, […]