Psychiatry/research

[Jorje286]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

Hi..

I'm interested in doing a double MD/PHD in psychiatry/neuroscience research, and I was wondering if such a career track is wanted and gives you good career opportunities. Thanks in advance.

 

[zen76]

I'm a graduating MD PhD. My PhD is in retrovirology, fell in love with Psychiatry after beginning my last 2 years of clinical rotations after coming back from grad school, lured me away from Heme/Onc. I did an away rotation at Columbia, spoke to the PD there. Anecdotally, he asked his fellow PDs at high powered research programs (approx 20 programs, i.e. Yale, Hopkins, UCLA, UPitt) how many MD/PhDs they had, and a couple of years ago the number was ~30. Psych and neuroscience are becoming very hot, with behavorial genetics, epigenetics, imaging, etc. When I mentioned my concern about having a PhD in Micro/Immuno, it was not a concern as far as he was concerned. Psych is getting more MD/PhDs that may have gone to neurology or IM in the past, but its still a small number currently.
In summary, yes, you would be highly sought after for residency and in academia, and if the democrats retake congress the NIH budget should be improved. One caveat, I've seen this with some MD/PhDs, you can be a research god, but if you have zero interpersonal skills, you will not do well in Psych, or clinical anything for that matter. And with Psych, you have some of the least popular patient populations, so think about it first.

My 2 cents,
Zen76

 

[Hurricane]

I'm a soon-to-be MD/PhD. (PhD was in Neuroscience - behavioral and anatomy type stuff in rats.) Having completed the match process, it seems that the residency programs are hungry for people with a strong research background and interest, and unless your med school stats are abyssmal, you can go to pretty much whatever program you want. It's also nice that the psych residency is already structured in such a way so that's it's very feasible to schedule research time, with the last year being 90% elective with no call at most programs. And many of the top academic programs have research tracks with extra didactics and funding opportunitues. So yeah, that career track is "wanted."

Good luck!

 

[OldPsychDoc]

I'm a soon-to-be MD/PhD. (PhD was in Neuroscience - behavioral and anatomy type stuff in rats.) Having completed the match process, it seems that the residency programs are hungry for people with a strong research background and interest, and unless your med school stats are abyssmal, you can go to pretty much whatever program you want. It's also nice that the psych residency is already structured in such a way so that's it's very feasible to schedule research time, with the last year being 90% elective with no call at most programs. And many of the top academic programs have research tracks with extra didactics and funding opportunitues. So yeah, that career track is "wanted."

Good luck!

I would just add to hurricane's comment that psychiatry can also lend itself very well to the kind of "part-time" clinical practice that allows one significant blocks of research time in a post-residency career, if that's your cup of tea.