Objective: Many express concern that modern medicine fails to provide adequate psychosocial and
mental health care. Our educational system has not trained the primary care providers who care for most
of these patients. Our objective here is to propose a quantum change: prepare residents and students
during all years of training so that they are as effective in treating psychosocial and mental health issues
as they are medical problems.
Method: We operationalize this objective, following Kern, by developing an intensive 3-year
curriculum in psychosocial and mental health care for medical residents based on models with a
strong evidence-base.
Results: We report an intensive curriculum that can guide others with similar training interests and also
initiate the conversation about how best to prepare residency graduates to provide effective mental
health and psychosocial care.
Conclusion: Identifying specific curricula informs education policy-makers of the specific requirements
they will need to meet if psychosocial and mental health training are to improve.
Practice Implications: Training residents in mental health will lead to improved care for this very
prevalent primary care population.