Training of Faculty and Staff in Recognising Undergraduate Medical Students’ Psychological Symptoms and Providing Support: A Narrative Literature Review

Abstract

Mental illness among medical students in particular, and higher education students in general, is very high. Many measures have been suggested in order to improve the situation, including training members of faculty and staff. However, to the best of our knowledge there seem to be no studies proposing training programmes for medical schools’ faculty and staff in response to recognising students’ psychological difficulties and symptoms in order to provide the relevant support. Also, in cases where such training for supporting medical students with psychological symptomatology exist, the efficacy of the approach employed is not known. By employing a careful literature search according to published guidelines for narrative literature reviews, this study aimed to fill in this identified gap in the literature. From the literature search, 14 articles were included in this review and the results show that no training tailored for faculty and staff in medical schools was identified. However, articles that related to higher education were included because they were useful in providing insights for medicine, and show the following: (a) faculty and staff acknowledged the importance of mental illness among students, (b) many of them discussed with their students psychological symptoms and provided support, (c) they tended to feel unprepared for recognising students’ psychological symptoms successfully and providing support, (d) they embraced the idea of being trained, and (e) any training seemed to be helpful for members of faculty and staff. From the results of this narrative review, we propose the CReATE circular pathway to ensure a sustainable process of training and support for students’ development.