Cinemeducation in psychiatry

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Summary

Psychiatry has had a significant influence on both Hollywood and world cinema. In turn, psychiatrists' fascination with psychiatric themes in films has inspired scores of books and bibliographies about films and psychiatry. Advances in medical education have led to the development of core-competency-based curricula for both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Learning objectives underpin such competencies. However, teaching competencies in the workplace is hampered by practical and ethical issues, especially in the case of psychiatric patients. Medical educationalists have found films to be a useful teaching tool with their larger-than-life vivid portrayals. In this article we demonstrate, with examples, the use of films and discrete film clips to achieve specific learning objectives that can be incorporated easily into most undergraduate and postgraduate teaching programmes in psychiatry.

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The psychiatrist's image in commercially available American movies.

M N Gharaibeh (2005)

To explore quantitatively how American movies portray psychiatrists/therapist. A total of 106 movies were reviewed regarding how psychiatrists/therapists were portrayed. The psychiatrist's or therapist's sex, age, clinical competence and knowledge, boundary violations, attitude toward the patient, influence in the movie's events, treatment modality or modalities used, intervention's outcome, and therapeutic setting. The psychiatrists/therapists tended to be males (71.2%), and (regardless of sex) middle-aged (50.8%). Despite the general view of the psychiatrists/therapists as friendly (63.6%), there was an over-representation of boundary violations. The percentage of total boundary violations was 44.9% of the cases portrayed and sexual violations accounted for 23.7%, while non-sexual violations accounted for 30.5% (with 9.3% overlap). The appearance of clinical incompetence was 47.5%. The image of psychiatrists/therapists in commercially available movies is not flattering: close to one out of two violated boundaries, close to one out of four committed a sexual boundary violation, and the psychiatrist/therapist was as likely to be incompetent as competent. The bright point is that psychiatrists/therapists were depicted as more likely to be friendly.

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Crossing the line--learning psychiatry at the movies.

A Akram, Jonathan R Latham, Aileen O'Brien … (2009)

Special Study Modules (SSMs) have developed in response to the General Medical Council's recommendations. St George's, University of London runs a 'Psychiatry and Film' SSM for medical students on the 5-year MBBS course. Many films have plots or characters that have a mental illness. Psychiatry & filmmaking share certain skills. Both seek to understand character, motivation and behaviour. Cinema therefore has the potential to be a useful tool for medical educational purposes. Specific to psychiatry, themes such as the accuracy of portrayals of different mental illness, the psychiatrist/patient relationship and living with a mental illness can be explored. General issues such as the role of the psychiatrist in society, medical ethics, professionalism and stigma can also be usefully highlighted for consideration and debate. This may encourage medical students to consider psychiatry as a potential career specialty and help reduce negative attitudes to mental illness.