thanks for the response whopper! Yea, by competitive, I mean in terms of getting the psychiatry residency as well as the forensic psychiatry fellowship down the road. Last time I read, the residencies were generally not that competitive versus other specialties.
Forensic Psychiatry is the most competitive fellowship in psychiatry. That being said, it is still easier to get into this fellowship than fellowships in other medical fields such as IM or surgery.
Its easier to get into a psychiatry fellowship in general vs the other fields because there's less psychiatrists.
To give you a ballpark demographic, you need to be a "decent" psychiatry resident to get into a forensic fellowship. To get into most of the IM fellowships, you often have to be the top resident.
For one, a lot of students treat psychiatry like a pseudoscience (understandable since there's still a lot to learn and the pathways are not as straightforward as other specialties .
This is of course more that has to be researched in psychiatry but to call it a pseudoscience is as valid as calling diabetes treatment 50 years ago a pseudoscience. There's still much we cannot quantify because this is dealing with the most incredibly complex organ in the human body. Our treatment approaches have as much validity as do several cancer treatments--let's see if they also call those pseudosciences.
how exactly do you link neuroanatomy and neurotransmitters to a traumatic memory?).
Charles Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D. has researched PTSD to the point where it may surprise you. Problem is his data & knowledge are so cutting edge that they are not yet clinically applicable. The point though is that thanks to giants like Nemeroff, psychiatry will get to the point where we understand it to the degree that we understand other fields of medicine.
I guess, it would be nice to specialize in an area with a decent amount of demand so you can have some choice in terms of where you can live in the future versus waiting for the next single opening and moving to wherever a job happens to be.
You need to be careful with this. The more you specialize, the less you may be in demand. Take for example a brain surgeon. A brain surgeon can't practice anywhere. He/she can only practice where a brain surgeon is needed--and that's not everywhere. Becoming more speclialized will probably get you more money but may actually close doors in terms of where you can choose to work.
Would there be adequate demand in this field to allow some freedom in determining where you want to live?
Depends on how specific. ITs not like you'll be able to plant your flag in a small town with little going on & expect forensic cases to come to you.
If you want to do clinical forensic psychiatry--you will have to work at a forensic psychiatric unit. They are not as plentiful vs regular adult clinical psychiatric units. If you want to work as court expert, you'll probably have to make yourself available near metropolitan areas & state capitals, though if you're good enough & your rep spread around enough, you can be asked to testify in any court in the area.
