Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Thursday, September 30. 2010

Psychiatrist shortage

Via, Ars Psychiatrica. A quote from the article he linked:



If surveys conducted by physician recruiting companies accurately reflect current trends in the job market, the news is very good for psychiatrists—and less promising for many patients with mental health disorders. Chief among those who may not receive the psychiatric care they need are children and adolescents and people who live in areas that are not densely populated.


Also,



The Bureau of Health Professions predicts that demand for general psychiatry services will have increased nearly 20% between 1995 and 2020. The Bureau also foresees a 100% increase in the need for child and adolescent psychiatric services during that period.


I think one of the reasons that fewer American medical students are going into Psychiatry these days is because it is turning into more of a pill-pushing and check-list diagnosing specialty than the "understand the whole person in depth" specialty that I became interested in.

Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss in Our Essays, Psychology, and Dr. Bliss at 15:53 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I don't know if psychiatry turning into a "pill-pushing . . . " specality is why medical students are avoiding it, but I do know that that's about all psychiatrists do these days. Last year we were searching for a specialist to treat our son, newly diagnosed with OCD, and psychiatrists who do anything but push pills are impossible to find - at least in our mid-sized metropolitan area. Basically you have to find a psychologist - often times a Doctor of Education and not a Doctor of Psychology - to do the counseling and then a psychiatrist to prescribe meds. And frankly that's a waste since they give very little attention to you when they do it, asking no questions past what other meds is the kid taking and not even worried about consulting with the psychologist. We finally went with our primary car doctor for meds because at least he knew our son and acted like he cared what happened with him.

I asked my son's psychologist (who was also hard to find - good ones are rare) why this was so and they said there was simply more money in dispensing pills since counseling sessions took an hour versus 10 minutes for a quit script.
#1 TRO on 2010-09-30 16:05 (Reply)
Well, as the field invents new disorders for Americans, especially children (ADD for everyone, expanding the definition of "autism" to kids who are just awkward) then I can see why the demand is going up.

It's sort of like the government - invent "new" problems then say you're the answer to the problem.
#2 whatever on 2010-09-30 17:09 (Reply)
Fortunately, unlike other professions, it only takes one psychiatrist to change a light bulb -- but the light bulb has to want to change.
#3 Dr Bob (Link) on 2010-09-30 17:33 (Reply)
Then there is the number of psychiatrists committing suicide. Two have killed themselves in our town of 60,000.
#4 LivingInPSRK on 2010-09-30 23:52 (Reply)
Psychiatry - at least the highly visible APA and other organizations - have so deeply committed themselves to extreme Political Correctness that they have severely damaged their credibility with the general public. Remember the "scholarly article" a while back that said conservativism was pathological?

As people look around wondering how America drifted from freedom, responsibility, and self-reliance to narcissism and naval-gazing pursuit of "self esteem" - a lot of them see psychiatry as a handmaiden that facilitated the infantilization of American mores.

And they're not entirely wrong.
#5 Ben David on 2010-10-01 04:51 (Reply)
I suspect that with the new health care "project" being put in force that within 10 years the prescription for any mental health care problem will be a fistful of doobies.
#6 indy jones on 2010-10-01 12:00 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.