PSYCHIATRIC INTERNSHIP

It is recommended that interns be given more formal instruction in psychiatry during the fifth year of medical education. While there are many objections, the advantages to the individual seem to outweigh the disadvantages. It is believed that internships could be arranged so as to include this type of service, and that a sufficient number of mental hospitals with competent personnel for teaching could be found. General hospitals will have to concede some points, and organized protests in favor of increased psychiatric teaching would be helpful.

The experience at Pittsburgh is described as an example of what can be done to include a psychiatric service in a rotating internship. As might be expected, the intern fresh from a busy medical or surgical service finds it hard to adjust to the different tempo of a mental hospital, with its confusing exactness. Fortunately, most interns lose all or the larger part of their fear of psychiatry as they become acquainted with it. It seems inevitable that this will be an advantage to them in later years. Formerly the average intern went into private medical practice at once or soon after his internship; today he enters the Army or Navy where the demand on him for psychiatric insight exceeds ordinary expectations. Because of this, a special effort should be made to familiarize him with the early forms of mental illness, preventive measures, social aspects, and the relationship of psychiatry to other forms of medicine.