DR M. P. Deva’s letter “Train GPs to detect depression” (The Star, April 18) prompted me to share my journey as a non-psychiatrist who learnt to love psychiatry. My undergraduate training in psychiatry was mainly at a dedicated psychiatric hospital dealing with psychotic patients, which is not the best way to instil interest in a subject. As pointed out by Dr Deva, psychoses make up less than 10% of psychiatric illnesses.
There are many patients with headaches, non-cardiac chest pains, irritable bowel and chronic backache who have seen neurologists, cardiologists, gastroenterologists, orthopaedic surgeons and many other doctors. These patients would invariably have multiple investigative medical procedures done on them. To ascertain that these symptoms are psycho-somatic (mind affecting the body) in nature, a doctor has to take a good history, including a good social history.
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