Family Psychiatry and the Medical Student: The Marital and Family Assessment Seminar

Abstract

This paper addresses itself to the importance of the family as it affects individual patients seen by the medical student in a psychiatric clerkship. The clerkship and the seminar in marital and family assessment are geared to sensitize the student to the stresses upon the family, the nature of family systems as well as his role in his own family. A brief review of the literature pertaining to the importance of family systems in understanding the individual is presented as is a model for medical student training in marital and family systems. A follow-up with the first 80 student-participants is presented. The seminar attempts to integrate theory, application, and self understanding in providing the physician-to-be with a grounding in assessment skills which will be necessary in his future practice.