Teaching Psychiatry in Mexico

Our country was the pioneer in the care of people with mental illnesses in America. San Hipolito's Hospital and the general asylum La Castaneda attest to this. Although the knowledge and therapeutic resources were initially limited, advances in psychiatric nosology gradually emerged. A number of prominent Mexican physicians found their way into the field of mental health in the early 1940s. Psychoanalysis left a deep mark on Western culture. However, the discovery of psychotropic drugs and the establishment of a modern psychiatric vision charted the teaching of psychiatry, emphasizing its importance in the medical career and the specialty. On the other hand, in recent decades the development of neuroscience and the social sciences has brought about progress in the classification of mental illnesses and their treatment. Today, resources for mental health care in our country are low and are particularly concentrated in the third level of medical care. Associated with this, we have about four thousand psychiatrists and child and adolescent psychiatrists, who turn out to be insufficient for they are concentrated in large cities and the,demand is growing. There exists a great interest in integrating mental health into the primary care network health. In our country, we have twenty offices with structured psychiatric specialization programs in sixteen universities. The future of psychiatry looks promising. The ability to relate more closely mental disorders with biology by imaging techniques, genomics and proteomics opens new horizons for therapeutic, keeping current psychological and social dimensions for clinical attention.