Page 65 - merged

S003-4

The Current Role of Psychiatric Education: the Western Europe Perspective

Michel Botbol

Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Western Brittany University, Brest, France

Content: Western Europe zone countries are certainly among the most resourced and organized
countries in the world concerning Mental Health cares and Psychiatric Education. They count with
the most influential traditions in this field and a long and strong experience in transmitting their
valuable knowledge to students from all over the world. To the point that, until the end of the first
half of the 20th century and the achievement of the decolonization process, the world was divided in
zones of influence of each of these western European psychiatric traditions (mainly English, French
and German at that time).
With the progress of neuroscience and the growing concern about the scientific ground of psychiatric
knowledge, Western European psychiatry can also be seen as one of the cradle of the revolution
introduced by the Evidence Based approaches in Psychiatry, putting globalized scientific methods at
the top of their agenda at the expenses of traditional or cultural approaches still in use in many
clinical practices. The current situation of Psychiatric Education in Western Europe results from the
contradiction between these two conflicting models:

 The clinical one, frequently referred to traditional approaches of psychopathology
(phenomenological or dynamic) and still strongly influential in many psychotherapeutic
training of several western European countries in which psychiatry is, overall, a therapeutic
discipline (Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland) with the support of most of the
European National Psychiatric Associations

 The research based one, referred to EBM, and mainly oriented towards investigation, health
organization and cost effectiveness that are nearly exclusive in some western European
countries (as England and Nederland) and are gaining academic and scientific influence
everywhere with the support of most of the European Institutions (Who, UEMS, EC,
Universities etc..)

In spite of the common academic frame proposed by UEMS and the EC for Medical and Psychiatric
Education, each western European country deals differently with these contradictions in the
construction of their Psychiatric Education system: some consider that their stake is to integrate
these two models in a clinically oriented perspective; others choose as their main objective to fight
against any of the clinical conceptions that cannot be based on current pragmatic evidences, even
when they are clinically invested by many professionals
After presenting these two models, this intervention will address their various consequences on the
role of Psychiatric Education through the example of UK and The Nederland from one side and
France and Germany from the other