There is a growing interest in understanding the impact of duty hours and resting times on training outcomes and the well-being of resident physicians. Psychiatry resident’s duty hours in Spain comprise a regular working schedule of 37.5h per week and a minimum of 4 mandatory on-call shifts. The most recent duty hours regulations in Spain were transposed from the European Working Time Directive (EWTD). According to Spanish Law, doctors cannot work for more than 48h per week and need to have resting times per day (at least 12h), per week (at least 36h) as well as annual leave (at least a month). However, there is practically no data on this situation in psychiatry resident physicians.

Our aim is firstly, to describe the number of shifts performed by psychiatry resident physicians in Spain. Secondly, to describe compliance with the daily and weekly rests compared to those set in national and European law. Finally, to analyse the difference by demographic variables (gender and year of residency), in both the number of on-call duty shifts and compliance with rests.

A descriptive cross-sectional study was designed through an online survey adapted from the existing literature. The target population were Spanish psychiatry resident physicians undergoing PGT who started their specialist training during the years 2018–2021. The survey was disseminated through the Spanish regional medical councils to all active psychiatry resident physicians by mail as well as through informal communication channels. The study was authorised by the Spanish Medical Organization’s General Assembly which is the highest ethical and deontological body of physicians in Spain.

55 responses were obtained, of which 61.82% identified as females. The mean number of on-call shifts in the last 3 months was 14.05. This mean was highest in women 14,32 and in the cohort of 2020 15.46 (first year of residency). Among the resident physicians surveyed, 66.07% exceeded the 48h per week limit set by the EWTD and 7% of them did not rest after a 24-h on-call shift. Furthermore, 22% of respondents did not have a day-off after a Saturday on-call shift. The mean working hours when not resting after an on-call-shift were 7 hours. The comparison by gender and year of residency of the main variables can be seen in figures 1 and 2 respectively.

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Psychiatry resident physicians in Spain greatly exceed the established 48 h/week EWTD limit. Likewise, non-compliance with labour regulations regarding mandatory rest after on-call duty and minimum weekly rest periods are observed. Differences can be seen by gender and year of residency. The situation described could potentially create a high-risk situation for the health and psychosocial well-being of resident physicians, hinder learning outcomes and could lead to suboptimal patient care.

None Declared

There are differences in the training curricula of medical specialists in different countries. The opinion of the doctors in training on how they acquire competencies and carry them out is of great importance. In our case, we asked ourselves what were the perceived shortcomings in psychiatric training.

The main objective of the study is to describe the opinion of psychiatry residents in Spain on the acquisition of competencies, compliance with the training programme and quality of clinical supervision.

This is a descriptive, cross-sectional, mixed (quantitative and qualitative) study. Based on previous bibliography and the ministerial order of the official training programme, an online survey was prepared, which was disseminated telematically through the residents’ representatives of the National Commission of the Speciality of Psychiatry of the National Council of Health Sciences Specialities.

A total of 109 responses were obtained, with representation from all the Autonomous Communities of Spain. Graph I shows the opinion of the psychiatry residents as to which competencies they feel are less developed at present, with the competencies related to psychotherapy standing out in first place with great importance. In terms of compliance with the training programme, the parameter most in line with what was established was the average number of shifts, with an average of 4.26 shifts per month. However, 11.7% of residents do not take compensatory rest after on-call duty as required by law. Moreover, the rotation times established by the BOE are not complied with in 38.5% of the hospitals. With regard to the rotations that the residents feel should increase their rotation time, the child and adolescent psychiatry and dual pathology rotations stand out (graph II). Finally, with regard to the supervision process, only 22.90% of first-year residents are always supervised in person during their rotations (graph III).

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Our study reflects the belief on the part of the resident physicians that further training in psychotherapy (45.7%), psychogeriatrics (10.6%) and dual pathology (8.5%) would be necessary. The fact that only 11.7% of the participants stated that they did not take compensatory rest after on-call duty seems to us to be an improvement over what was initially expected. There are other less reassuring data, such as the fact that only 22.9% of first-year residents report having continuous supervision. We consider that the results found follow the trends observed in studies carried out in residents from other countries. We stress the need to carry out a greater number of studies with a broad population base in which to find the failures that psychiatry residents themselves perceive in their training.

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The media portrayal of mental health is relevant in shaping the population’s attitudes towards mental disorders. However, there is little information about the representation of children and adolescent mental health in the Spanish press, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The general objective of this study was to analyze the tone and content of Spanish newspaper articles about mental disorders in youth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We collected media articles from 10 news sources, comprising the digital editions of five online news websites and five printed newspapers over a 6 month period (January 2021-June 2021). These articles were coded for content using a standardized codebook, followed by a qualitative thematic analysis. A total of 205 news items were evaluated.

Results showed that the majority of the news items had an overall positive tone (68.3%), only 5.4% were stigmatizing and only 7.3% were related to violence. However, few articles offered help seeking information (6%), adolescents were rarely quoted (14%) and children were never quoted. Substantial differences are described in terms of age, gender and disorder, with adolescents, males and patients with psychosis or behavioral disorders most associated with stigmatizing content or violence. The thematic analysis led to three emergent themes: (i) violence and victimization; (ii) the COVID-19 pandemic; and (iii) technology and social media. The number of articles that described young people with mental health problems as victims of violence was prominent.

The Spanish media generally does not stigmatize mental health problems in children and adolescents. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic may have promoted more positive discussion about youth mental health. However, there remains some room for improvement, as patients are seldom quoted, very few articles offer help-seeking information, and a narrative of victimization without appropriate discussion of resilience regularly occurs.

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Approximately one person commits suicide every 40 seconds, resulting in more than 800,000 deaths per year worldwide. Regarding this phenomenon, it is necessary to highlight how suicide rates increase markedly with age. These reach their highest figures in people aged 85 years or older, and this increase is very worrying in certain geographical areas. Although there is extensive literature on the risk factors that influence at the individual level, the same cannot be said when the problem is analyzed at the population level.

The study aims to review the entire Eurostat database, relating suicide data from different European countries to any possible variables that may influence suicide. In this pilot phase, certain socioeconomic variables were chosen based on criteria of suitability and availability of the information provided, selecting data from 2015, as it was the most recent year in which most countries reported their data on suicide in people over 85 years of age.

Firstly, a comparison was made of suicide rates in people over 85 years of age in relation to overall suicide rates in different European countries (suicide rate in people over 85 years of age divided by the total rate in the country). Secondly, socioeconomic variables that may be more strongly related to suicide in this age group in these European countries were studied. After calculating the conditional suicide rate in people over 85 years of age with respect to the overall suicide rate in each country (Fig. 1), Spearman correlations were performed between the conditional rates and different demographic variables, economic variables, social variables, and health variables.

Conditional suicide rates in people over 85 years of age show a marked difference between southern and northern European countries. In the correlational analysis, several significant associations were found. Suicide in those over 85 years of age was associated with economic variables (social deprivation, economic impossibility to buy new clothes, impossibility to dedicate money for personal matters and Gini coefficient), demographic (old-age dependency ratio) and health (self-perceived health). After performing a multivariate regression with the variables that were significant in the Spearman correlation, included the variables “old-age dependency ratio (X1)” and “economic impossibility to buy new clothes (X2),” with a value of R-square = 0.612 and a value of p < 0.01.

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The conclusions suggest that of the different variables studied, the great majority in which an association has been found belong to the field of economics, specifically poverty and economic inequality, and demographics, highlighting the old-age dependency ratio. Furthermore, marked north/south differences can be observed in the different European countries.

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