ABSTRACT
Medical students’ initial separation from the lay world in medical school originally hardly seems matched to their professional aggregation; preclinical students are not treated as an integral part of the professional world they aspire to. The anticipated stresses of exams are in fact accompanied by what students describe as evidence of this: sleeplessness, diarrhoea, vomiting and other physical manifestations of anxiety are common before exams, and at clinical Finals some candidates are almost paralysed by anxiety. Scientific culture, in the context of which investigators make these assumptions in their psychological studies of stress and depression among students and junior doctors, is very similar to the medical culture in which students and doctors find themselves; investigators and subjects share the same assumptions. The high rates of mental illness in the medical profession have been known for some time.
