Training Description:
People presenting for evaluation of a psychiatric crisis are at risk for significant medical issues that can arise related to their underlying psychiatric condition, absence of appropriate medical care before presentation, side effects of psychiatric treatment, as the direct result of substances that may have been ingested or occur independently of their psychiatric condition. Mental health clinicians need to be familiar with some common presentations and the high-risk medical conditions in this population. At times, the features of an individual’s psychiatric presentation may interfere with their ability to clearly state medical symptoms, or they may be dismissed by providers who mistakenly interpret their symptoms as part of a psychiatric syndrome.
This training will familiarize providers with the common effects of substances, features of presentations that may overlap between medical and psychiatric causes, as well as common and important medical conditions that may occur in psychiatric or non-psychiatric populations, but which require more attention concurrent to psychiatric treatment. The lecture will not encompass treatment approaches to these conditions but serve as an overview to aid clinicians in identifying when they may need additional medical support to evaluate or care for a given individual.