Mentoring and Supervision in Community Psychiatry

Even as history reflects medicine’s acquisition of a scientific core, learning how to implement formal knowledge has developed through relationships with more senior colleagues. While learning through these relationships, new professionals find career paths and are modeled for their own turn as future supervisors and mentors. Mentorship in psychiatry has range and depth. This chapter focuses on how psychiatrists develop skills through different levels of involvement with mentors, forming professional identity with the help of colleagues committed to their growth and success. Moreover, because of the clinical and systems nature of most community psychiatric practice, this chapter emphasizes how community psychiatrists experience being mentees and mentors, and how this process can unfold. After discussing basic tenets of mentorship, the chapter embarks on detailed discussion of clinical supervision in residency. It then turns to examining the process of mentorship, including a successful mentorship’s active ingredients and challenges, its complementary benefits for mentors, and its role in community psychiatric research.