"Whither Training in Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine!" What need to be done ?

Inspite of repeated efforts by successive teams of Office Bearers of our IPS, due recognition by the IMC about the importance of Psychiatric and Psycho-social factors in both Undergraduate and Postgraduate Medical Education nothing much has been achieved. It is not advisable any longer to keep up our efforts in this regard at the same pace as we have been doing till now. It is now imperative for us to take up this matter as an ongoing policy issue in an aggressive manner. Towards this end, I have a few suggestions to make for the attention of the members of our profession as well as the current Office Bearers of our IPS. 1. Our (IPS) priority objective must be to get the Medical Council of India to officially acknowledge the paramount importance of 'Psychiatric' (Psycho-socio-biological) training not only in Undergraduate Medical education, but also in Postgraduate Training in all disciplines (including in such subjects as Anatomy, Physiology or Pathology) with the premise that, 'all medicine is Psychosomatic medicine'. Once this objective is fulfilled, rest of the successive steps will become very easy. I will elaborate my points about this objective and its fulfillment in a few successive stages. 2. Apart from the well recognized 'psycho-somatic syndromes', almost all known conditions requiring medical intervention (under whatever discipline) have important psycho-social correlates either in etiology, exacerbation, complications, or effective managements or outcome. From this point of view, it can be said that 'all medicine is psychosomatic medicine'. Every one of us know the truth of this fact; but, evidences to this effect will have to be generated and made available to: (i) professional leaders of all sister-medical disciplines, and (ii) office bearers of the Indian Medical Council. 3. The only way of achieving this objective (item 2) is by repeated clinical investigations or studies (in all clinical disciplines) about; (i) prevalence of psychiatric morbidity in patient population in each clinical discipline; (ii) psychosocial aspects of etiological factors; (iii) role of psycho-social factors and interventions for favourable prognosis, and (iv) publications of these investigations in National Journals of respective disciplines. 4. For achieving the above tasks, the responsibility of taking the initiative and continued active role has to be borne by mental health professionals, psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric social workers, and psychiatric nurses. Of course, active participation of colleagues from the corroborating disciplines will have to be ensured including guideship and authorship. 5. …