Medical School Only for Psychiatry [Need Advice]

[hatuey]

I am an incoming college freshman. I received a full scholarship at the University of Southern California and turned down several higher tier Ivy league institutions in the hopes of saving money for medical school. In college, I'll be double majoring in psychology and neuroscience.

I want to pursue psychiatry, and specifically forensic psychiatry. I'm primarily interested in the behavioral sciences and the biological underpinnings for crime and violent behavior. For example, understanding the biological roots of certain mental illnesses (e.g. psychopathy) fascinates me and is something I have been enamored with for as long as I can remember.

I am aware that you do not get much, if any, of this in medical school. However, I know that psychiatry, unlike psychology, would give me an understanding of the human body, the brain, and the medications used to treat violent offenders and criminals. I believe this bigger picture is still very valuable.

The issue is, unlike traditional physicians, I would not say I have an intrinsic desire to better the lives of others through compassion and care. I am more interested in using a medical lens to understand the minds of dangerous criminals and those that have the potential of making our lives significantly worse. I believe that forensic psychiatry would put me in a prime position to further these interests.

I am not sure if going through the extensive training is worth it, especially when other medical modules simply don't appeal to me. I would appreciate any advice. Thanks.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[nitemagi]

I'm not clear on what path you're particularly looking to take. Do you want to do research on the minds/brains of dangerous criminals? Do you want to master the current knowledge base and do court evaluations? Do you want to work on governmental policy issues?

The avenue of application may end up dictating your path, but doesn't have to. Most importantly, be prepared for life to affect you -- things you learn and experiences you have may give you new perspectives, new interests, and change what you want to do. If that doesn't happen, then I might argue that you're not very engaged in the world.

What's nice about medical school is that it gives more options than most other professional training. All of the above that I listed could be done with an MD, and a whole lot more. Some of them could be done with a PhD or an MPH, but not all. And should you decide, after spending a lot of time with actual criminals in a clinical setting, that you don't want to do that for a living, you have all the other options available as a physician, a psychiatrist, and a forensic psychiatrist.

 

[pms_testosterone]

How many forensic psychiatrists are there in the country? Researching that will give you an idea if pursuing this career, and this career alone, is realistic.

Also keep in mind you will have to see and treat patients - at least in residency, and probably throughout your career, unless you get a purely research position at a university (which would likely require a PhD). Does that interest you?

 

[hatuey]

I'm not clear on what path you're particularly looking to take. Do you want to do research on the minds/brains of dangerous criminals? Do you want to master the current knowledge base and do court evaluations? Do you want to work on governmental policy issues?

The avenue of application may end up dictating your path, but doesn't have to. Most importantly, be prepared for life to affect you -- things you learn and experiences you have may give you new perspectives, new interests, and change what you want to do. If that doesn't happen, then I might argue that you're not very engaged in the world.

What's nice about medical school is that it gives more options than most other professional training. All of the above that I listed could be done with an MD, and a whole lot more. Some of them could be done with a PhD or an MPH, but not all. And should you decide, after spending a lot of time with actual criminals in a clinical setting, that you don't want to do that for a living, you have all the other options available as a physician, a psychiatrist, and a forensic psychiatrist.

I would be primarily interested in doing research on the minds of dangerous criminals and directly communicating that knowledge to government agencies, such as the FBI.

 

[NontradCA]

I would be primarily interested in doing research on the minds of dangerous criminals and communicating that knowledge to government agencies, such as the FBI.

PhD in Psychology would fit your goals best imo. Definitely not medicine.

 

[hatuey]

How many forensic psychiatrists are there in the country? Researching that will give you an idea if pursuing this career, and this career alone, is realistic.

Also keep in mind you will have to see and treat patients - at least in residency, and probably throughout your career, unless you get a purely research position at a university (which would likely require a PhD). Does that interest you?

Seeing and treating violent criminal offenders would very much interest me and is something I could see myself doing on day-to-day basis.

 

[hatuey]

PhD in Psychology would fit your goals best imo. Definitely not medicine.

The issue is that I would be compromising a great deal of knowledge and financial stability/flexibility if I were to get a PhD rather than say... an MD PhD. As I wrote in my post, I believe that psychiatry, unlike psychology would give me an really thorough understanding of the human body, the brain, and the medications used to potentially treat violent offenders and criminals. That's why I'm so conflicted

 

[NontradCA]

The issue is that I would be compromising a great deal of knowledge and financial stability if I were to get a PhD rather than say an MD PhD.

As far as the knowledge base, you’d probably have a better understanding of a criminal’s mind studying psychology. Unless you have a strong desire to prescribe mood stabilizers and antipsychotics, which may or may not benefit the criminals you treat, you’d be wasting time pursuing medicine. Med school would be 4 years, (7 for PhD), and residency 4 years. Most of which you would hate if you didn’t want to help people, and it would hate you back.

You can still do evaluations and testing as a psychologist, whom if I am not mistaken, are the experts in that area. I get the financial aspect, but using that logic you’d be wasting money getting a PhD or doing forensics anyway. AFAIK most forensic psychiatrists don’t do forensics full time.

 

[WisNeuro]

The issue is that I would be compromising a great deal of knowledge and financial stability if I were to get a PhD rather than say an MD PhD. As I wrote in my post, I believe that psychiatry, unlike psychology, would give me an understanding of the human body, the brain, and the medications used to potentially treat violent offenders and criminals. That's why I'm so conflicted

Umm, no. Some of my PhD colleagues who only do casual forensic work charge over 300 an hour. For some who do it full time and have good connections, over 500 an hour. You're not exactly looking destitute here. Also, most of the leading researchers in psychopathy, particularly the neuroscience of it, are Phd researchers. Some in clinical psych, some in experimental psych.

 

[psych md jd]

Talk to Drs. Gross and Botello who run the Forensic psychiatry fellowship at USC Keck. The former is a MBA, PhD, JD, and the latter is a MD.

 

[TexasPhysician]

As a college freshman, you don’t need to have it all figured out. The next step is medicine vs psychology. You can figure out the rest along the way.

As a college freshman, I was 100% ER physician. Things change as you develop through college/med school.

 

[Bartelby]

I second Texasphysician, things are very likely to change as you make your way through college and medical school.

For your current interests, Psychiatry will open up some unique options. For instance, you could work in a sex offender clinic providing "chemical castration" like Lupron. These providers offer a highly valuable service, and are few and far between. You would also have special expertise working with chronically psychotic individuals, with substance abuse across a range of settings, with severe mental illness, and with general medical conditions that have behavioral manifestations. With that said, psychology will expose you much more to psychological testing and research methods than would medicine. If you want a research career, pursuing that with an MD alone is possible but doing an MD PhD would make success significantly more likely.

 

[deleted407021]

As a current med student, I'll add that while going to med school aiming to go into psychiatry is fine, you'll need to be comfortable learning all of Medicine and potentially going into primary care. Very little of medical school is psychiatry and the vast majority of it is basic science and learning the rest of the specialties.

 

[psyguru]

There is a research forensic fellowship in NY somewhere. I know someone who did the research year in human trafficking and then did the clinical year.

I would recommend going to a medical.school with a forensic fellowship and maybe get involved early.

There are all kinds of forensic psychiatrists with all kind of research interests. You can be an expert witness in that area. An example .

I even found a forensic psychiatrist that works for the military, went to so secret intelligence university and is the expert in examining those with top secrets, those who threaten top military leaders, etc. I know of forensic psychiatrists who examined in war criminals at un war tribunals. Once you complete the fellowship, you can take a part time clinical job, make as much as a non md and take courses as a criminologist.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

[psyguru]

Fyi I dont do forensics full time...I have a full time clinical correctional job. Most of my patients are psychopaths. I work in a special program and see many anti social and some.psychopaths (pm me for details). Meds are not a magic bullet but can possibly help.

I am starting to do more forensics and could go part time clinical in the near future if I want with my practice growing. There will be a shortage of psychiatrists so I could potentially be in the position of picking more interesting cases. You could also do a fellowship in neuropsychiatry or neuroimaging.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

[psyguru]

Another option is to maybe get some kind of back ground in criminology and statistics and public health. You could be an expert in violence risk, etc. Here is a link to the Dietz expert panel to give you an idea of all the disciplines that can be involved

Our Expertise | Park Dietz & Associates



Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

[NickNaylor]

I think going into medical school with a one-track mind is a bad way to go. You have to be interested in the human body generally because, in medical school, you are going to learn a whole lot about it and spend a whole lot of time learning how to fix it. I'd guess that, at most medical schools, less than 10% of that time is spent learning about psychiatry specifically. I would argue that a general medical education is relevant to psychiatry - after all, you need to know how a lot of the things that we do in medicine impact the brain and mind - but, in contrast to many other specialties, you learn very, very little about the actual practice of psychiatry. The net result is that you spend a whole lot of time learning about things you may not be particularly interested in or care much about, all in a fairly stressful environment. That's a recipe for burnout and feeling completely beat down.

I don't think it's a bad idea to have an interest and want to pursue it. But for psychiatry, specifically, there are other ways to be involved with the study and treatment of the mind and brain that, I think, I can provide you with a shorter and more direct route to that career path.