Psychiatric problems in third-year medical students

Each year as many as one of four medical students experience sufficient emotional pain to seek psychiatric consultation. In many cases the precipitating stress relates to specific stresses associated with the phase of training. In the third year increased clinical responsibility may evoke feelings centered on caretaking, sexuality, and aggression that cannot be contained by an as yet fragile emerging professional identification. The authors present four case histories of third-year medical students to illustrate the complex interaction between family background, motivations to enter medicine, and the specific patient experience that resulted in sufficient distress to require psychiatric consultation.