The August 2009 edition of the Student Associate Newsletter of the Royal College of Psychiatrists is the first to be produced entirely by student associates themselves. Professor Robert Howard, the Dean of the RCPsych, gives advice on how to get published with some sensible advice including asking a senior if there’s anything they require help with. Neel Burton takes us through his atypical route into psychiatry via working in Paris as a strategy consultant and then an English language tutor. Vivek Datta summarises the anti-psychiatry movement by succinctly summarising the ideas of Michel Foucault, R.D. Laing and Thomas Szasz – no room for a mention of L. Ron Hubbard. R.D. Laing’s ninth child Benjamin Sunkel-Laing expands on some of the aforementioned ideas by pointing out that there are is lack of known neural correlates for different psychological phenomena. Leverne Mountany discusses her programme to use psychiatrists based in South Africa to train GPs in Botswana in diagnosis and management of psychiatric disease to supplement the five psychiatrists in the entire country. Stania Kamara interviews Steve Peters about his experiences of being the only psychiatrist in elite sports in his responsibilities for the Olympic team of Great Britain. Gemma Ward posits that fiction has a role in helping doctors empathise with their patients. Elsewhere, Georgina Fozard writes up a dinner held by King’s College London for members of psychiatry societies nationwide, Cheryl Bennett talks about the medical student workshop held at the RCPsych’s Annual Meeting, Philippa Aveyard writes freely on delirium and Rebecca Slack, Natalie Thomas, Katherine Townson and Shameel Khan share the most interesting moments from their psychiatric electives.
UK medical schools traditionally have undergraduate societies dedicated to medical specialties run by students themselves. The purpose of these seems not just to learn more about the speciality, to network with other students who are similarly inclined for tips and inspiration but also to give more consideration to whether the specialty in question is really what the student in question wants to spend an entire career doing. Decisions don’t come much more fundamental than that. However, these societies tend to have very variable levels of use depending on how much time students have and how much they are willing to invest. Recently, there seems to have been a wave of interest in psychiatry, which is really welcome at a time when only 6% trainees sitting MRCPsych Part 1 graduate from UK medical schools.
