Addressing psychiatric education in Latin America: challenges and opportunities

This article is about the psychiatric educational components in the field of psychiatry. Currently the training and educational objectives focus on five major areas: undergraduate education (medical students); graduate education (psychiatric residents); psychiatric education for primary care physicians, as well as physicians in other medical specializations (psychosomatic training); public health and public education at large, and patient and family education, and the promotion of 'mental health' at a community level. Given the strong globalization process observed in all regions of the world in the past two or three decades, it is very important for Latin America to constantly review and update its psychiatric and behavioural sciences curriculum across all medical institutions and universities of the continent. New methods of teaching and novel approaches to education in the field of psychiatry are currently based on models that are also in use in other parts of the world, especially in the USA. Boards of certification for psychiatrists are being implemented all over the continent. Sound certification guarantees that the professional has followed and passed an educational training plan to make him/her qualified to start practising the profession. The future of psychiatric training will be closely bound to the future of the practice of psychiatry, and will have to get ahead of the challenges the specialism will face during the next decades.