The community mental health center as a setting for a psychiatry junior clerkship

The implementation of a psychiatric outpatient experience for a first class of junior medical students in a nonmedical model community mental health clinic is presented. The advantages and disadvantages of exposing students to a community-oriented, rather than a medical-center-oriented, treatment system are discussed in some detail. Differences between the two settings of particular import were the stress placed by the clinic upon team decision-making, diffuse responsibility for client care, a somewhat antimedical orientation, and treatment of clients whose complaints are more often "problems of living" rather than of psychiatric illness. It is felt that the positive aspects of such an exposure outweigh the negative ones and that by careful planning many of the potential drawbacks of such a setting for a psychiatric outpatient rotation can be successfully avoided.