An interpersonal model for teaching psychiatry to medical students

Many medical students and hospital physicians hold negative images of psychiatry, perhaps because of unnecessarily complex teaching models used at the undergraduate level. The interpersonal teaching model described here allows physical symptoms to be related to interpersonal relationships. This helps the practitioner detect nonpsychotic emotional illness in medical patients. With the aid of a three-question screening test, students learned to recognize emotional illness in medical patients and to arrange psychiatric consultations. Student response to the model has been positive, and students have carried the screening skills with them to other rotations.