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Psychiatry is a short final-year subject whose NEET PG questions are mostly clinical vignettes built on diagnostic criteria and drug facts. Below are the books and revision courses toppers and students named, the 2026 teachers, the topics and traps analyses flag, and a plan for each stage from final year onwards.
PW's July 2026 pattern page expects about 4–6 Psychiatry questions. PrepLadder's April 2026 psychiatry guide puts a typical paper higher, at 8–12, and says schizophrenia alone tends to bring two or three. These are recall-based estimates, so plan for a range rather than a fixed number.
The questions read long but test familiar ground. PrepLadder calls them predominantly clinical-vignette-based, and Marrow's subject-by-subject verdict on 2025, reproduced by Careers360, found “Easy and straightforward questions with deceptively long question stems”. PrepLadder rated the 2026 Psychiatry section moderate, with questions on clinical syndromes and drug interactions, and candidates' recalls of the 2026 paper include Dhat syndrome.
A good share of Psychiatry marks are really Pharmacology: lithium monitoring and toxicity, typical versus atypical antipsychotics, SSRIs, and the naloxone and naltrexone pair. Learn these properly in 2nd year and start a page of psychiatric drug side-effects. If you have a psychiatry posting in 3rd year, note the disorders you see; the same names return in final-year vignettes.
Psychiatry is examined inside Medicine Paper 2. Make a one-page table for each major disorder: core symptoms, duration rule, first-line drug and its main side-effect. Dr Sanika Mahar (INI-CET AIR 155) prepared Psychiatry from BTR on its own. Start Grand Tests this year if you can, so long vignettes feel normal before internship.
Psychiatry suits duty days, because its chapters are short and most facts sit in tables. DigiNerve's advice to interns is to align study with current postings and use real patients to memorise symptoms and signs, so revise the disorders you meet in your psychiatry posting that same week. In its month-by-month intern plan, short subjects get the fourth month, with a mock test every week.
Cerebellum's June 2025 strategy for students scoring around 145 correct, written with Dr Praveen Tripathi, tells them to target short subjects such as Psychiatry, Anaesthesia and Radiology alongside Medicine, PSM and Pharmacology. It suggests mini GTs on three or four topics at a time and a full GT every 15 days.
Among the topper interviews we read, the Psychiatry source named by title is Dr Praveen Tripathi's review book. Dr Shashwat (INI-CET AIR 2, May 2025) listed it alongside Robbins and GRG sir's notes. DigiNerve's January 2026 book list describes Review of Psychiatry as updated to DSM-5 and ICD-11 and based on the 10th edition of Kaplan & Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry. Dr Tripathi teaches Psychiatry on Cerebellum, is one of its founders, and was also named in a 2020 student faculty guide.
Two 2025–26 student examples both take Psychiatry from revision material. Dr Sanika Mahar used BTR alone, and a comment with 15 likes under Dr Akash Maity's 19-subject resources video recommends PrepLadder's live rapid revision (LRR) for Psychiatry among other subjects.
Kept Dr Praveen Tripathi's review book as his Psychiatry source and moved to concise notes as the exam came closer.
Fitted PrepLadder's Rapid Revision and Qbank around internship duties of up to 18 hours, and told juniors not to ignore short subjects such as Psychiatry and Anaesthesia.
Used BTR alone for Psychiatry, and advised keeping extra videos for weak areas rather than collecting more resources.
| Platform | Psychiatry teacher | Course |
|---|---|---|
| Marrow | Dr Mohan Sunil Kumar | Edition 8.5 “Clinical Edge” |
| PrepLadder | Dr Ankit Goel | Version XI |
| Cerebellum | Dr Praveen Tripathi | Mission 4.0 |
| DBMCI One | Dr K S Vivekanandan | Live ’27 |
| DocTutorials | Dr Nadeem Zafar | Edition 6 |
| PW MedEd | Dr Era Dutta | One Plan |
Rosters as listed on each platform's own 2026 course pages (read 2 Oct 2026). Teachers do change between editions, so check the course page before you buy.
Taking one subject from a second platform is common; the same toppers often appear on more than one platform's results list. Whatever the mix, the habits toppers mention most are steady ones: in one aspirant's count of 27 topper interviews (DrG, September 2026), 26 mentioned revision cycles and 26 mentioned daily questions. The platform comparison covers what each course includes.
Because the questions are vignettes, practise on full-length stems: the Qbank chapter by chapter, then the PYQs topic by topic. Dr Shashwat practised PYQs regularly and counts leaving them late as a mistake. Mnemonics help with symptom lists; Oncourse's psychiatry guide uses SIGECAPS for depression, DIG FAST for mania and the five A's for negative symptoms of schizophrenia.
| Topic | What to learn |
|---|---|
| Schizophrenia | Schneider's first-rank symptoms, the dopamine hypothesis, typical versus atypical antipsychotics. PrepLadder expects two or three questions from it. |
| Depression | Diagnostic criteria, MDD versus dysthymia, SSRIs, ECT. |
| Bipolar disorder | Lithium monitoring, toxicity and interactions; NSAIDs reduce lithium clearance. |
| Substance use | Alcohol withdrawal and delirium tremens, other withdrawal syndromes, naloxone (short-acting) versus naltrexone (long-acting). |
| Anxiety disorders | OCD, panic disorder, PTSD. |
| Psychopharmacology | Side-effects of psychiatric drugs and drug interactions, which the 2026 paper tested. |
| Organic and emergencies | Delirium versus dementia, psychiatric emergencies, medical illnesses that mimic psychiatric disorders. |
| Culture-bound syndromes | Dhat syndrome, reported from the 2026 paper. |
| Safe to skip | Rare personality disorders, uncommon paraphilias and detailed psychotherapy techniques, all in PrepLadder's skip zone for Psychiatry. |
Compiled from PrepLadder's 2026 psychiatry high-yield, study-or-skip and expected-topic lists and recalls of the 2026 paper (Sartha, PrepLadder).
Schizophrenia and other psychoses, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, OCD and PTSD, then substance use. After each topic: short notes, its Qbank questions and a revision within 48 hours, the loop Cerebellum recommends.
Antipsychotics, antidepressants and mood stabilisers with their side-effects and interactions; then delirium, dementia and emergencies.
After every three or four topics, sit a short test on just those topics, as Cerebellum's 2025 strategy for students scoring around 145 suggests. Keep full GTs about every 15 days.
Reduce everything to your one-page criteria and drug tables, and revise them at least twice before the exam.
During internship, Oncourse's 60-day psychiatry routine is a workable model: 30 minutes of theory, 45 minutes of MCQs and 15 minutes of mnemonics a day, about 90 minutes in all. On heavy duty days, the MCQs alone keep the subject warm.
PW's July 2026 pattern page expects about 4–6, while PrepLadder's April 2026 psychiatry guide puts a typical paper at 8–12, with two or three on schizophrenia. They are recall-based estimates, so plan for a range.
Dr Sanika Mahar (INI-CET AIR 155) used BTR alone for Psychiatry, and BTR and Rapid Revision are the two resources named most often across 3,277 YouTube comments posted under NEET PG resource and strategy videos between October 2025 and October 2026. Dr Ritik Sharma's September 2026 video, Are You Using BTR Wrong?, separates the subjects BTR covers alone from those that need rapid revision as well. Whatever you use, back it with the Qbank and PYQs.
Dr Shashwat (INI-CET AIR 2, May 2025) used Dr Praveen Tripathi's review book. For the final-year exam, Ashirwad's MBBS book list names Ahuja's Psychiatry, and Kaplan & Sadock is a reference rather than a book to read through.
Be comfortable with both. PrepLadder's high-yield list stresses DSM-5-TR criteria, and Tripathi's review is updated to DSM-5 and ICD-11. Questions catch students on core symptoms and duration rules, so learn those exactly.
Dr Mohan Sunil Kumar (Marrow), Dr Ankit Goel (PrepLadder), Dr Praveen Tripathi (Cerebellum), Dr K S Vivekanandan (DBMCI One), Dr Nadeem Zafar (DocTutorials) and Dr Era Dutta (PW MedEd). Pick the one whose notes you will finish and revise.
Final year, with its postings and the Medicine Paper 2 syllabus, is the time to learn it; internship is for revising it, when its short chapters fit between duties. The final-year and internship guides cover the other subjects at each stage.
Usually not. Psychiatry is text and tables, so black and white with a readable font and wide margins works well; colour helps only for colour-coded tables. WhatsApp us the PDF for a quote.
Send your Psychiatry PDF on WhatsApp: BTR, PrepLadder or Marrow revision notes, your criteria and drug tables, or handwritten notes. We print text in crisp black and white with room to write, bind short subjects as slim volumes and deliver anywhere in India.
Order on WhatsAppRead in October 2026: topper interviews, book lists, students' resource videos and comments, and analyses of the 2025 and 2026 papers.