On October 30, 2010, three dozen medical students from New York and beyond gathered in Manhattan at a meeting of PsychSIGN, the Psychiatry Student Interest Group Network, to discuss the practice of Psychiatry as a career. Anya Bernstein, a fourth year medical student at Stony Brook University, co-chaired the meeting. She chairs PsychSIGN’s New York regional organization.
Jeremy Bennett, MD, a second year resident in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stony Brook University, conducted a workshop on Stigma in Psychiatry: Is It Still an Issue? with Professor of Psychiatry Andrew Francis, PhD, MD, and Michael Schwartz, MD, Director of the Psychiatry Residency Program at Stony Brook.
“Medical students came to the meeting looking to finalize their decisions about whether to specialize in psychiatry,” Dr. Bennett said. “The workshops presented them with a variety of socially relevant topics.” The workshop on stigma used a case study to explore the subtle prejudices that may influence how people think about mental illness. “By helping both patients and physicians become more aware of their biases, we can help patients make more autonomous choices,” Dr. Bennett explained.
