Literature as an introduction to psychiatric ethics.

Responding to requests for an earlier introduction to psychiatric ethics, the authors added "An Introduction to Psychiatric Ethics Through Literature" seminar to their institution's first-year curriculum. The authors' primary objective was to increase the sensitivity of beginning psychiatric residents to ethical dilemmas. The 11-session seminar was co-led by a psychiatrist and a literary scholar. At each session, the group discussed a short story selected by the seminar leaders, with the discussion centering on ethical considerations raised by the story and their relevance to the practice of psychiatry. The residents gave the seminar high ratings for its increasing their ethical sensitivity and the stimulating content of the stories.

Collaboration between the Air Force, VA, and a university psychiatry department on an inpatient unit.

The David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base in California is the site of a collaboration between the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the School of Medicine of the University of California, Davis, which was begun in 1994 to assure optimum use of resources and provide broader educational experiences to residents and students. The three systems have been integrated most fully on an inpatient mental health unit. The authors describe the history and development of the collaboration, focusing on how the model has helped the three organizations address clinical, institutional, and educational needs.

The role and function of residents' organizations in psychiatry education.

Psychiatry residents' organizations have been poorly studied and variously portrayed as facilitative or regressive. A telephone survey of 19 residency programs of differing sizes in all major geographic regions revealed that 89% had some form of residents' organization. The groups are characterized by a wide range of structures, and they undertake a variety of tasks. The most common tasks are support, problem solving, and venting dissatisfaction. Problems frequently faced by such groups include changing resident constituencies, personality conflicts, authorization disputes, and representation and consensus problems. Strengths of such groups include their ability to help foster a sense of group identity; to provide a safe place to ventilate, work on problems, and fashion a consensus for the residents' input to the institution; and to offer training opportunities f or future psychiatric managers.

Effects of emotion on perceptual asymmetry: interactions with personality.

Perceptual asymmetry on a series of four specially constructed dichotic word tests was found to change as a function of the emotional quality of the words in the tests (P = 0.05). This was most pronounced in the case of positively valued words which produced an increase in asymmetry consistent with facilitated left-hemisphere function (P less than 0.004). Changes in asymmetry with emotion differed as a function of personality characteristics of the subjects, with repressors and high anxious subjects showing an increase with emotion while true low anxious subjects showed a decrease (P less than 0.02). Personality groups also differed in asymmetry on an emotionally neutral test (P less than 0.04) and in changes in asymmetry over time independent of emotion (P less than 0.001). These data suggest that emotion mediated activation of the left hemisphere may facilitate information processing within that hemisphere. Moreover, they indicate that dichotic listening tests may provide a non-invasive and inexpensive method for assessing emotion mediated changes in brain state that are clinically relevant.