Teaching Mental Health Trainees to Work With Families of the Chronic Mentally Ill

Torrey (10) has accused many of us of contributing to "iatrogenic anguish" by blaming family members of schizophrenic patients. Many more of us have been guilty of ignoring, avoiding, and alienating families, perhaps out of a well-meaning sense of loyalty to the patient, perhaps out of lack of time, perhaps out of discomfort with our own competence. While we can, and should, work to rectify these deficiencies in current psychiatric practice, we must also attend to what we are teaching the future generation of mental health professionals. Perhaps we can teach them to do a better job than we have done.