I am so thoroughly interested in mental illness and I originally decided to go to medical school because I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I think that I would really enjoy being a psychotherapist, but I am so in love with physiology, anatomy, and biology in general, that I knew that I would absolutely love medical school. And besides, pscyh grad school never seemed too interesting to me. Also, I definitely want to integrate the biological aspect of mental illness into my treatment, because I aknowledge that there is a large physiological/anatomical component to mental illness (how big of a component... I am still trying to figure that out).
However, as I prepared for medical school, and did psych clinical work, I started re-thinking psychiatry and I started to get more excited about other fields like endocrinology, neurology and family practice. I still have such a passion for the treatment of mental illness, I am just not sure that it would be something that I would want to do day in and day out. My clinical psych work became very emotionally burdensome at times. I am hoping that medical school and residency will train me so that I have more precise control over my emotional reaction to people with mental illness, which, I am under the impression that, they will.
At this point, I want to stay very open and embrace every rotation as if it might be the field that I will ultimately enter, but my passion remains with psychiatry.
