MD/PhD in Psychology?

[flyingeagle]

Hey everyone,

I'm a psychology-related major who loves the field but have been set on becoming a doctor for a while now. I definitely want to become a physician, but as I have become exposed more and more to the field of psychology, I would feel bad to completely give it up after graduating. I think it would be really fun and rewarding to do research in the field. I like the behavioral side of research more than the bench research that most MD's or MD/PhD's do, and so finding out you can do an MD/PhD in psychology peaked my interest. However, there is such little information on it and was hoping people could give me some insight on it.

First of all, how competitive are these programs in psychology?

What kinds of jobs could I do with an MD/PhD in psychology? Is the time split still 80/20 as it is for more hard science MD/PhD's?

Can I still do some sort of behavioral research with just an MD? I'm interested in neurology/pediatrics so I think doing something like developmental or memory research would best suit my interests. If so, what might a career like that look like?

Thanks for the help!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[StIGMA]

Why not psychiatry?

Also, much psychology research is clinical and not the focus of MD/PhD programs (eg: you don't need a PhD to do it- an MD would be just fine).

 

[tr]

This seems like it could be feasible. I imagine you would have to apply MD/PhD at a medical school that was part of a university with a psychology department (so not like Einstein or Sinai where they only have the medical school), you'd have to contact the psychology department to make sure they would be open to it, and you'd have to make your case to the admissions committee that you have a good reason to want to pursue that particular degree. The competitiveness would depend on the school/program but most funded MD/PhD programs are pretty competitive. See multiple stickies in this forum for more information on that.

In my academic psychiatry department there are tons of psychology PhDs and their options and trajectories seem very similar to those of MDs. They can do anything from 100% clinical work to 100% research (main difference with the MDs being that their clinical work is all psychotherapy, no meds). Some of the work I do is very much like clinical psychology and I actually mentor psychology PhD students through a joint program in our department, although my PhD was in neurobiology.

An MD definitely does not teach you how to do clinical psychology research and I have had to do a lot of catching up on statistical methods and certain conventions in the field. But as an MD you certainly could have a research career in psychiatry that could be very similar in content to many areas of clinical psychology. You would just have to invest the time to learn the methods in the field, just like any other MD wanting to do research. There is some behavioral research in peds neuro (pertaining to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders) but I don't think they have as much overlap with psychology as psychiatry does.

80/20 is some sort of number that gets thrown about but contrary to SDN mythology there isn't an '80/20 track.' There are tenure-track research faculty positions where you are competing directly with PhDs (and anything more than 10-20% clinic time would severely hamper your ability to produce at the expected level), and there are (typically non tenure track) clinical faculty positions where you can do as much research as you can fund, ranging from 0% to 100% (though 0% would be much more common than 100%).

I have never met an MD/PhD with a psychology PhD but that doesn't mean it would be impossible or not useful. It's just not very commonly done so you would have to have a pretty clear career trajectory in mind to convince an MD/PhD admissions committee about it.

 

[strangeglove]

A PhD in clinical psychology is its own clinical degree, with a research component. Arguably, you would be just as well equipped to do the kind of clinical research that clinical psychologists tend to do with an MD, residency in psychiatry and then a research fellowship (no PhD required). If you were interested in experimental psychology, then a PhD added to the MD would make sense, and there would be applications of this work to psychiatry mostly. Also, many experimental psychologists are doing cognitive neuroscience research or animal behavior research, so there is a lot of overlap with neuroscience. PhDs in cognitive neuroscience are quite well established now and many are going into psychiatry.

 

[neur0cat]

Sorry if I'm bumping an old thread but I'm wondering if it would make sense for someone who has a PhD in Psychology (Neuroscience/Cognitive Neuroscience area) to pursue an MD thereafter. Specifically, my area of research utilizes neuroimaging techniques in combination with genetics and I have worked with clinical populations in psychiatry and neurology. I do have some clinic shadowing background and prior participation in grand rounds etc (hopefully this somewhat shows that my interest is not so much of a complete career switch but rather complementary interests that have evolved over time). My goal is definitely to remain in academic medicine - I am not 100% clinical practice oriented. Would such a transition to an MD program seem jarring?