Teaching Social Science During Psychiatric Residency

The advent of social and community psychiatry constitutes a compelling reason for systematically presenting the basic and applied sciences underlying these areas to psychiatric residents. The State University of New York's Upstate Medical Center has developed an 18-month social science lecture course for second- and third-year residents; conclusions and recommendations based on five years' experience are presented. The author feels that the residents' career decisions toward community psychiatry were considerably sharpened as a result of the course.