Are general practitioners well-equipped to impart psychiatric counselling to patients?
The most unfortunate part is that the MBBS course, due to a total lack of emphasis on psychiatry, does not offer adequate training to the students in this field. In fact, psychiatry is not even a compulsory subject at the undergraduate level. As a result, most of the general practitioners are not trained to deal with the patients if they have some psychiatric disorder. As a profession, what is the future of psychiatry? Behavioural sciences are going to dominate the medical scene in the coming years. Lifestyle diseases like cardiac ailments, depression, anxiety and hypertension are emerging as the biggest health hazards for the population. And the medical practitioners need to take into account the mind and body relationship while prescribing treatment for these ailments.
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