Objective: The aim of this paper is to examine medical students’ views on the usefulness of a community project as a venue to train professionalism. Methods:Medical students at Cyberjaya University College of Medical Sciences (CUCMS) were surveyed following psychiatry community projects organized during year 4 undergraduate attachments in psychiatry. Results: A total of 176 students returned the survey forms. A majority of medical students thought that the psychiatry community project promotes teamwork and leadership skills. About a quarter thought that it helped foster their communication ability and encouraged them to be more reflective in their daily lives. These findings were translated into the potential of the community project to train “collaborative” and “managerial” affective domain learning outcomes of the university. Conclusions: The findings indicate that psychiatry community project or similar programmes may be useful tools to train several elements of medical professionalism. Future research however should utilise specific measurements to confirm this finding.
COVID-19 has impacted the world in many ways due to fears of contracting the pandemic, social distancing, and large-scale movement control rules. These have especially grave consequences for inpatient psychiatry. This article reviews measures taken to adapt to the new norm in inpatient care, both for standalone psychiatry units and consultation-liaison units. For inpatient units, changes have been made for personal protective equipment usage, screening and triaging policies, and training and educational policies. Consultation liaison units together with inpatient units have been required to expand the scope of coverage and difficulties by providing certain teleconsultation services. As the new norm takes precedence, Sabah has to embrace and empower community-based psychiatry services for better outreach and coverage. This article discusses the issues underlying the new norm in the management of inpatient psychiatry patients in both units and presents some points and practical solutions on the ground to instil hope
Psychiatric services have progressed well throughout history, marked by a shift from heavily inpatient asylums to outpatient management via deinstitutionalization, and advances in psychopharmacology. An overview of important themes is discussed at public mental health level. Firstly, differences between sexes are touched upon from theoretical and societal perspectives. Next, among the disabled, the phenomenon of diagnostic overshadowing, attributing apparent mental health problems to learning disability, contributes to their overall poorer quality of life. Mental health at both extremes of age is another important theme, whereby dementia and depression are keenly observed in the older age group, while maternal risk factors and parenting play a role in the mental well-being of the younger age group. Fourthly, inequalities, stigma and discrimination, are rife among people living with mental illness, and thereby detrimental in their road to recovery. Deinstitutionalization is explained as being more than just downsizing the inpatient load, gaining prominence with the emergence of community psychiatry services, and found to be helpful in overcoming stigma. Demographically, it was demonstrated that developing countries, as opposed to developed countries, have advantages in their approaches to psychiatric services, including better integration of people living with mental illness into society. Lastly, the psychological well-being of mental health workers should not be discounted, with measures such as stress management and resilience training proving to be key in combating burnout.