psych at harvard, stanford, columbia

i've noticed that everyone i know going into or that's already in psychiatry/psychology/social work has some serious mental problems and messed up history. psychiatry is a seriously difficult and not very tangibly rewarding job_ it seems to attract almost exclusively people that have had deep personal experiences with it.

just an observation.

 

As someone who has just endured -- and thankfully, survived -- interviewing for a psych residency position, I think the best advice I can give is to not always rely on what other people or websites say about the strength of the psych residency programs. Psychiatry is one of the most deeply divided fields with respect to ideology, and this really affects other peoples' opinions of the training programs. The most important question to ask is: what are you looking for in a residency program and how would you like to practice in the future? My experience is that the Northeast -- particularly Boston and New York -- is one of the last havens for psychodynamic therapy/psychoanalysis and they will tend to look down on the more "biologically" oriented programs (i.e. the ones in the south and on the west coast) and vice versa. So, it all comes down to the big question: is one orientation and method of training better than the other? Probably not, but it shows that people's opinions are just as likely to be colored by their training background. I found it really helpful to just attend as many interviews as I could and see what the programs are all about firsthand (I often found that people's criticisms of other programs were completely unfounded). It is also a really interesting learning experience and it really opened my eyes as to how differently the programs approach the practice of psychiatry. Here's another interesting thing: some of the programs with which I was most impressed were not the "big name" schools but some of the smaller programs. However, there is always the tradeoff of excellent program vs. location (most of these schools were in smaller cities, so not always ideal given where you are in life at the moment).

 

Two of the programs that really impressed me were the University of Massachusetts and Brown (neither of which made the US News list, but they both have very solid training programs). One of the major reasons why I didn't end up ranking either at the top of my list was because of location (I'm a city girl at heart and I don't think I could survive in a smaller setting no matter how hard I tried to make myself think I could). I want to do a fellowship in child psychiatry after my general residency, so I ended up applying to a lot of the programs that offered either double-boarded or triple boarded programs (both UMass and Brown offer combined child/general psych programs). Some tips on trying to narrow down programs to apply/interview at: 1) do you have any special interests in psych? You could do a medline search to see where the major researchers in your field are based; 2) location -- I wanted to stay in the northeast, so I limited my applications to this area plus a few of the programs further south; 3) social network -- do you have any friends in any particular city you'd love to spend a few years with?

 

Greetings. I've been reading the posts here and while I don't have any diagnosed psych conditons, as yet, I am very interested in forensic psych. My interest would be in profiling and serial murder investigations. Does anybody have any thoughts on this field? I'm not in this room often so if you have any thoughts, or experience, in this field, please e-mail me at [email protected]
Thanks.