Date Posted: November 14, 2021
Contributing Author: Joseph Cooper, MD
Overview: Popular media is saturated with stories about psychiatry and psychiatric illness. As medical professionals, we have all had the experience of being approached by a friend at a party – or by a patient or a family member – who is eager to ask for our opinion on the latest media story. Being able to thoughtfully field these questions is a core professional skill. The goal of our Neuroscience in the Media sessions is that you will be able to serve as ambassadors of psychiatry, psychology, and neuroscience who can thoughtfully communicate findings from the field to a lay audience. In this interactive exercise, you will review and appraise media content, imagine what a patient or family member might ask about the piece, and assess the face validity of any media claims. Then you will review a piece of related medical literature and role play discussing the media piece with a patient or family member.
Author Affiliations: Dr. Joseph Cooper is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry, and Co-Director of the Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry Fellowship at the University of Illinois at the Chicago. The National Neuroscience Curriculum Initiative is funded in part by the Deeda Blair Research Initiative Fund for Disorders of the Brain through support to the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, the Society of Biological Psychiatry, the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and by National Institutes of Health Grant No. R44 MH115546-01. ©National Neuroscience Curriculum Initiative.
