Faculty Bibliography

Working from an initial study, which attempted to quantify the number of serious mental disorders among psychiatric residents, the authors focused on the relationship of these problems to the exigencies of the training experience. Under the auspices of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training's Task Force on Emotional Problems of Residents, a questionnaire was distributed to all residents who completed training in 1975. Respondents in this national survey had an opportunity to rate the stressfulness and the impact on personal and professional growth for many specific aspects of residency training. These ratings, plus the considerable demographic data obtained, suggest high stress levels for many aspects of residency training, but also illustrate the growth promoting effects of most of these experiences. Much of this important data was included in an article recently published in this journal. As a follow-up to this initial report, this article provides a further review of the data and offers guidelines for improving the emotional status of our colleagues in training

Previous studies of emotional stress in psychiatric residency training have been impressionistic, focused on suicide or severe emotional disorder, or derived from small samples. There have been no reports of what large groups of 'average' residents consider stressful, and no reports of the relationship of stress factors to personal and professional growth. The authors, working with a Task Force of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training, developed a questionnaire that was distributed to all residents who completed their training in 1975. Summarized in this paper are many of the more significant results obtained from this very detailed survey. The 148 variables examined include considerable demographic data. This is analyzed and correlated with the impact on stressfulness and impact of personal and professional growth rated for many specific aspects of residency training. Concrete data and recommendations that might prove useful to all psychiatry programs are provided. It is hoped that this may stimulate similar research in other areas of postgraduate medical education

Two new forms, specifically designed for computer processing of data from a contemporary consultation-liaison service, are described. The need for such data and their immediate applicability to problems currently facing this psychiatric subspecialty are discussed. Clinical, administrative, and evaluation uses are reviewed. It is hoped that this work will provide a stimulus to consultation-liason practitioners to use this system or to develop similar systems that will permit documentation, exploration, and enhancement of the consultation-liaison effort

Sociodemographic, drug-taking history and psychological test data were collected from 133 male heroin addicts in treatment programs. Those addicts who had ever sniffed glue (26.4%) were characterized by a unique orientation toward death. Not only were they significantly more likely to have attempted suicide, but also they more often fantasized about death both while on heroin and when clean, and they acknowledged less fear of the pain/deterioration involved in dying as measured by the Collett-Lester Scales. In addition, they had on the average abused more than twice as many different substances as addicts without a glue use history