Outlook of Psychiatry?

[valkener]

Posted this earlier in Allopathic but apparently the wrong forum!

What's the general outlook of psychiatry? I'm not doing rotations just yet but planning them ahead. I'm definitely fairly interested. I'm a bit worried about mid level specialists similar to CRNA's and anesthesiology.

Particularly in the mental health field you have clinical social workers/counselors and clinical psychologists who, in some states can even prescribe medication.

I'm somewhat interested in child/adolescent psychiatry but to me job security counts more than a "general interest".

Thanks I appreciate it!

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[billypilgrim37]

These threads devolve into blood baths. Hopefully I can staunch that with a quick response

In general, there is a tremendous need for psychiatrists, especially CAP, and there will be for the foreseeable future. We also generally expect our non-psychiatrist mental health colleagues to improve access and quality of care in conjunction with us rather than replacing us.

How will it effect our bottom line? We have no clue. All of health care is in a tremendous flux, and most of us expect to make much less money in the future than folks in our positions have in the past. That said, we expect that we will still be comfortable and have no problems paying off our loans, etc.

A search on the forum will bring up many bloody threads on prescribing psychologists, scope of practice, etc. Inevitably a psychologist and a less socially skilled MD will start beating each other senseless in the corner while the rest of us watch with our mouths open.

 

[dl2dp2]

A search on the forum will bring up many bloody threads on prescribing psychologists, scope of practice, etc. Inevitably a psychologist and a less socially skilled MD will start beating each other senseless in the corner while the rest of us watch with our mouths open.

LOL

To just re-iterate a positive outlook, I think psychiatry is a great field to go into. Lots of interesting research is going to come out; CNS drugs development is slowing down, but still happening. Some hope of biomarkers/genomics etc. should bare fruit in the next 30 years.

If you think about it, 30 years ago all psychiatrists had was psychoanalysis, and they defended their turf so very hard. Now you can practically make a career doing only pharmacology. As there are more meds and somatic treatment modalities in the future, you likely would see more of a difference in terms of what psychiatrists do. In terms of therapy, I think there will be a place as well as psychiatrists may do pharmacologically assisted psychotherapy and other more advanced procedures. And psychiatrists who end up doing primarily psychoanalysis will still be the preferred treater for ultra rich patients for a variety of reasons and constitute a legit subspecialty.

 

[nitemagi]

A search on the forum will bring up many bloody threads on prescribing psychologists, scope of practice, etc. Inevitably a psychologist and a less socially skilled MD will start beating each other senseless in the corner while the rest of us watch with our mouths open.

I resemble that remark!

Billy is right. You will find opinions that range from the death of the midlevel to the death of psychiatry (to be swallowed up by neurology, or prescribing psychologists sweeping the nation). All I've seen is that there's plenty of jobs out there, the pay is good, and there's no clear trend indicating that's going to change dramatically in the near future.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

And plenty of our adult patients getting together to make more child patients...

Talk about "job security"!