Podcast Transcript
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This is a transcript of a podcast by Hannah Mendelson in 2007.
It is the start of a new year. The time to say goodbye & thank you to familiar faces, and the time to welcome an eager new cohort of trainees. Welcome!
And warning! The year ahead is a difficult one; a rite of passage some might say.Working in mental health is a difficult but fascinating area. It is difficult because of the nature of the patients we treat. It is difficult because there are not enough resources and services are pressured. It is difficult because there continues to be a stigma around mental illness.
Negotiating the intricacies of training and College is an added difficulty. Beware of FORMS! (Generally the biggest College hurdle of first year.)
Have I put you off yet?!
The good things about Psychiatry training can be hard to identify at times - but they are there! Psychiatry is a truly intellectual discipline of Medicine and it often attracts interesting and thoughtful people: your fellow trainees are an invaluable source of support and inspiration.
While services are stretched beyond capacity, the truth is that your patients, their family and friends, truly need you – and it is nice to be needed!
Unlike in the past, there really are some useful therapies available currently to help treat patients with a psychiatric illness, and the research continues to expand. And the skills that you develop - in order to engage in the therapeutic rapport and dance with a patient - will hold you in good stead in other aspects of your life.
If you are reading this article, you have presumably received the newsletter produced by ANZAPT. ANZAPT exists by and for trainees – make use of it! Let your voice be heard! There are a variety of ways to be involved and thus become connected with the several hundred other Psychiatry trainees who are out there, across Australia and New Zealand.
It really is nice sometimes, realising that you are not alone.