Are some psychiatrists "off" to the point where it's common to expect this?
Yes--kinda, sorta and no.
IMHO any field of medicine is going to make doctors different--to an extreme that may be bothersome. I've noticed several surgeons and Ob-gyn doctors appear to have narcissistic traits and a little obsessive compulsive personality disorder traits. That's not all of them, there are plenty of friendly ones etc. However, IMHO, the extreme of the training and the hard hours for several years does change a personality, and several change into a person who is more irritable and fits the above description.
I've also noticed that the field does appear to attract people with more mental health issues. Several fields do this on a parallel basis. E.g. someone I know who had childhood cancer wants to become a pediatric oncologist.
Is that bad? Not really. Wouldn't you want someone to be in the field because they are inspired to help others in an area where they needed help?
However--still, it does raise the odds that a medical student who made have had a psychotic disorder, and was able to make it through the training, would end up being a psychiatrist. I've also noticed that since psychiatry tends to have more laid back hours, this also tends to attract people with mental health issues because they may need the extra time to make sure their personal lives are under control.
To add to the confusion and push you in a different direction, IMHO because we treat mental health, IMHO there are also far more psychiatrists who are more mentally healthy than our other physician colleagues. Since we are in a field where signs such as excessive irritability, yelling and bullying are seen as signs of a mental disorder, I've seen this occur far less in this field than in other fields of medicine.
Nearly all the surgeons and ob-gyn doctors I know are overworked, and it shows. They are more irritable or show other signs. I don't mean to criticize them because I know I'd be the same way. In fact one could even interpret my comments as saluting them for their hard work and sacrifice to their profession.
I've noticed a good deal more personality pathology in specialties like Ob-Gyn, Emergency Medicine and Surgery than in Psychiatry. This may just be specific to where I train,
Nope--not as far as I can tell. I've been in several hospitals and seen the same thing. A buddy of mine who practices in the mid-west (Utah) told me he had a patient who was an orthopedic surgeon who worked 100 hrs a week, and was so sleep deprived, he actually had visual hallucinations during surgery. (no he was not schizophrenic--when he got his sleep, the hallucinations went away). The guy was so driven to "be the best" and make the money that he was willing to push himself to that degree. I see that far more often in other fields, especially the ones where you know for residency, and probably the rest of your life you will not get a decent night's sleep except when you are on vacation.
