Psychiatry

Author: Choi Cho-kee
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-04-01
Features: Most students from clinical medicine departments in medical schools do not engage in psychiatric work after graduation. They typically become clinicians in general hospitals, community doctors, or researchers. The patients they treat include those with internal, surgical, gynecological, pediatric, neurological, endocrine, hematological, and infectious diseases, as well as the mental disorders and psychological conditions that accompany these diseases.
Psychiatry textbooks for medical students should include more content on mental disorders associated with physical illnesses, as well as the diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of various psychological conditions in patients from different departments of general hospitals. Given the increasing number of patients with mental disorders seeking treatment in general hospitals and the growing trend of general hospitals offering psychological counseling, developing liaison psychiatry, and advancing psychosomatic medicine, it is essential to enhance the training in identifying various mental symptoms and the diagnosis, treatment, and management of common psychiatric disorders in medical textbooks. Since most medical undergraduates in the five-year program will work in general or community hospitals in the future, it is crucial to expand the psychiatric curriculum to include training in recognizing mental symptoms, diagnosing and treating common mental illnesses, as well as psychological counseling, psychotherapy, psychosomatic diseases, and psychiatric rehabilitation.
Strictly speaking, psychiatry falls under the category of neuroscience, with complex etiologies and profound concepts, even some confusion. With only about 40 hours of psychiatric instruction in medical schools, how to enable students to grasp the basic identification and preliminary diagnostic and treatment skills of common psychiatric disorders within limited class time is one of the key challenges in writing high-quality psychiatric textbooks. This requires the material to be concise, focused, and visually engaging. The authors of this textbook have made efforts and attempts in this regard.
This book covers 23 chapters, including the etiology and classification of mental disorders, the symptoms and signs of common mental disorders, the examination and diagnosis of mental disorders, mental disorders caused by brain diseases, mental disorders caused by physical illnesses, and more.