SPs are useful additions to our educational toolbox but have intrinsic limitations for our field due to psychiatry's roots in the nature of empathy and the patient-psychiatrist relationship. Standardized patients are most appropriate for exposing trainees to a variety of psychopathologies and testing very discrete skills; the use of SPs is most problematic for teaching psychotherapy and assessing complex interpersonal skills, such as empathic responsiveness.

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This article chronicles the development and implementation of Monday Psychiatry Clinic, a psychiatry component of a medical student-operated free clinic (The Monday Clinic) in Dallas, Texas, providing assessment data systematically collected in the clinic. The established clinical purpose of Monday Psychiatry Clinic is to assess common psychiatric disorders and refer patients in need to appropriate sources of care. This clinic provided leadership education and volunteering opportunities to medical students who learned to interact with patients with psychiatric concerns, established clinical interviewing skills, and became familiar with psychiatric diagnostic criteria. More than one-third of the patients screened positive for depression, alcohol, or drug problems, and one-fourth of the patients with a positive screen were diagnosed with one of these disorders. All patients with identified problems were referred for the appropriate level of care.

Most of the factors the authors assessed in prospective applicants did not predict future problems, with the exception of negative (even mildly so) comments in the dean's letter. The authors suggest that more attention should be paid to the use of the dean's letter to assess risk among applicants, and prospective study of this assessment should be performed.

Providing information and educating patients about their illness and options for treatment is an essential part of medical practice. Little is known about medical students' and residents' training in these skills, however. It is well known that cooperation, effective communication, and a good relationship between the psychiatrist, the patient, and the patient's family improve the prognosis of severe mental illness. If the patient and family members are expected to become competent partners and to cooperate in long-term treatment, psychiatrists have to share information about the illness and its treatment with them. As providers of care, psychiatrists obviously have the knowledge and experience that patients and their families do not. The only way to bridge this natural knowledge gap is to share the information in a comprehensible and structured way, in what is known today as psychoeducation. What Is Psychoeducation and Where Does It Help?Psychoeducation is the provision of systematic, relevant, broad, and up-to-date information about an illness or condition, including its diagnosis and treatment. Psychoeducational programs provide both disease-specific information, e.g., early recognition and management of relapse symptoms or any potential genetic implications of the illness and general information, e.g., promotion of healthy lifestyle, problem-solving and communication skills training, identification of stressors in households, and education of family members and primary care takers in their amelioration. Furthermore, psychoeducation includes information on how to explain aspects of living with an illness to family members so that they can understand the effect of the illness and assist the patient and treatment providers in the treatment program.There is evidence that psychoeducation improves the outcomes of mental illness and many other medical illnesses. Family interventions, including psychoeducation for schizophrenia, have proved to be one of the most consistently effective treatment modalities available, with relapse rate reduction at 50-60% over treatment as usual [1,2]. Besides relapse severity reduction, psychoeducation leads to less frequent relapses, better treatment adherence, lower self-stigma, better quality of life, improvement of social competencies, active engagement in rehabilitation, and lower cost of care, either alone or as a part of complex treatment regimen [3][4][5][6][7]. Thus, family psychoeducation is recommended in several schizophrenia treatment guidelines [8][9][10], for example, as an evidence-based intervention.There is similar evidence that psychoeducation and family interventions may reduce the recurrence of bipolar disorders and depression. Psychoeducation and cognitive behavioral therapy are associated with increased time to mood episode relapse or recurrence [11,12]. Preliminary evidence shows that family psychoeducation for patients with depressive disorders improves patient functioning and the well-being of family caregivers [13]. Similarly, psychoeducation seems to reduce...

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