Behavioural Medicine ( Activities & Objective )

Activities

Medical students posted to the department are taught how to clerk and carry out physical and mental state examinations, psychometric and psychological testing and laboratory investigations of mentally ill patients admitted to the psychiatric ward.  Medical students take part in clinical management of patients both at the out patients’ clinic and on the ward. They also take part in crisis intervention of severely disturbed psychiatric patients and in Consultation-Liaison of patients referred from other clinical departments of the hospital. There are collaborations with the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Yaba, Lagos, Prisons, and institutions for mentally-handicapped children, geriatric institutions, and Primary Health Care Centers to observe the extent of psychiatric problems in the society and how they are managed. Medical students are taught forensic psychiatry in order to expose them to the Lunacy Law and the proposed Mental Health Policy. 

Objective

At the end of the 500 Level students’ clerkship in psychiatry, they should be able to:

  1. To understand the interplay between biological, psychological social factors, cultural attitudes, norms and belief systems in the etiology, predisposition, precipitation and perpetuation psychological and psychiatric illnesses
  2. To be able to recognise, diagnose and provide appropriate interventions for common psychiatric disorders among children, adolescents and adults and also make appropriate referrals where necessary
  3. Acquire the techniques of interviewing mentally-ill patients and carrying out adequate psychiatric mental status examination
  4. To recognise the importance of differential diagnosis in the practice of psychiatry
  5. To carry out modern psychiatric investigations
  6. To understand international nomenclatures of psychiatry as contained in chapter V of the tenth version of the International Classification of Diseases (I.C.D -10) and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual V (DSM-V)