Behavioural Neurology

[dentite001]

---

Members don't see this ad.

First of all, I'm not an MD. I just graduated in psychology and was considering either graduate school or medicine. If you've been over to the Psychiatry board, you will notice that there was a major debate over psychologists getting prescription rights. Some have mentioned that Psychiatry may die and that the furture may lie in behavioural neurology. Others on the surgery board have suggested that neurology has the potential to become a bigger more intellectually challenging field. I ask, what exactly would this entail? The immersion of psychiatry and neurology, or something totally unique? Thanks for any perspectives.

Dentite001

 

[tofurious]

Depending on the instituion (and more as a result of convention at each institution), a patient with any dementing syndrome will be seen by either psychiatry or neurology. This used to be alright, but now we are finding out that more and more of the patients initially diagnosed with a dementing syndrome will actually have one of the Parkinsonism Plus syndromes that they will be better served by neurologists. With the progress made in molecular research, mostly by neurologists and neuropathologists, the field of behavioral neurology (in this instance ADULT abnormal behavior neurology) is gradually becoming a specialty of neurologists rather than psychiatry. Many institutions where psychiatry has traditionally taken care of demented patients are actively hiring behavioral neurologists. On the other end of the spectrum, new residency programs combining pediatrics and developmental neurology are likely the best programs to train physicians to deal with pediatric behavior neurology with the few exceptions of diseases outlined in DSM IV. However, I think psychiatry still has a role in medicine because behavioral neurology will NOT deal with depression, psychosis, and substance abuse because these are messy conditions to deal with and nobody will try to steal that field from psychiatry (I guess with the possible exception of psychology).