“They are almost always exclusively inpatient psych and if they do get any outpatient exposure, they’re usually not sitting in on people who are doing analysis or other extensive outpatient talk therapy, they’re watching people come in for 15mins to get a refill on their meds” - Well, maybe my D. was lucky or maybe they see that she actually have a certain “talent” in this area, but she was doing “one on one” although it was in-patient and not out-patient. The medical students have to go thru special training for that, they even have to know in which position to be in a room in relation to the door and few things like that because of safety considerations. D. enjoyed this “talking” part a lot and expressed her wish that it was used wider in place of some medications. But again, she was just a medical student, but patients that she dealt with definitely had mental issues.
“I disagree with you here though (not the first sentence). Certainly if someone isn’t doing anything to manage their anxiety/depression (and I’m not necessarily talking about medication here) they’re probably going to fall apart,” - I could not mention it specifically, but by “broken beyond repairs” I meant unfortunate cases of suicide. And unfortunately, as a medical professionals, they are better equipped to be successful at that even if it takes few attempts. I cannot be more specific / detailed about that. But I stand strongly on this: “he people with the prior history of anxiety / depression maybe should not be considering the medical school altogether,”. I have very unfortunate reason for this belief, trust me, I wish I did not have it.