“MDCU Let’s Talk” a program outside of the classroom encouraging Chula medical students to talk it out

The Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University are attentive to the mental health of medical students that are at risk of mental health issues cause by studies related stress and therefore have initiated the “Enhancement of mental health for the benefit of satisfactory learning within the Faculty of Medicine” (MDCU Let’s Talk) project. The project offers advice about mental health to medical students of all years through a Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy service run by psychiatric specialists and educational psychologists.

Associate Professor Dr. Nuttorn Pityaratstian revealed that “The Bachelor of Medicine program is a 6 years long course. Each subject has a considerable amount of content and is quite difficult in comparison to the timeframe, which often creates a feeling of discouragement during studies. This causes the students to accumulate a lot of stress, in cases of people who also suffer from depression, this may lead to suicide which we see quite often as a result of working on the MDCU Let’s Talk project. Within the last year, a total of 43 students have registered interest in receiving treatment, and in the academic year of 2561 BE, a total of 54 students. After monitoring the results of counseling with the psychologists and specialists, most of which are their seniors, we have found that students have felt an improvement in their mental health and can adapt to the ever-changing environment. Furthermore, they feel they can manage their studies with more ease and live a happier life on campus. This led to us expanding the project to hospitals under the Collaborative Project to Increase Production of Rural Doctor (CPIRD) project such as Prapokklao Hospital, Chantaburi and Chonburi Hospital, Chonburi, etc.

Students that are interested in the project can contact to request treatment every Tuesday and Wednesday at 1.00 – 5.30 pm and Thursdays from 1.00 – 3.30 pm. To make an appointment ahead of time please contact the academic department of the Medical Faculty at 02-256-4476 or via Facebook Messenger of the MDCU Let’s Talk page

Chulalongkorn to Use 5G to Unlock VR Classrooms

National Broadcasting and Telecommunication Commission (NBTC) and Chulalongkorn University officially initiated a collaborative two-year operation called 5G IT/IOT Innovation Center on campus to study and develop the use case of 5G technology to materialize VR classrooms.