# Psychiatry - Reliable career or not?



## Ming (Apr 7, 2010)

ENFP here, and being that, I can't decide on my career. There's too many, and they're all screaming 'EAT ME', and I can't choose.

I'm hoping to get some insight on Psychiatry, and maybe some information on careers that might be suitable for me...

I guess I'll just put down a few of the 'personal criteria' -

*I like new things. New people. MUST MEET PEOPLE. Preferably help them in some way. (Ennegram 2 here)
*I like communication. (Thus, why I considered marketing is a fair choice)
*I can learn. LEARN. Without having to focus too HARD. (Well, I'd do it if it was really necessary!) Preferably about personality and human psyche/brain.
*I like thinking in another person's shoes (Empathy?). - Thus why acting is good also.
*I like challenges; and I'm quite ambitious. I'm willing to work hard, but only ONCE I'VE ACTUALLY SET MY MIND FOR ONCE.

Help? :crazy:


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## Siggy (May 25, 2009)

Psychiatry may not be your best option. You need to go to med school and in the working environment there isnt much interaction, mostly prescribing meds.

Psychology however may be a better alternative. There is a lot of one on one interaction with people. and it is certainly a helping profession. You can choose which mental disorders you want to treat, and you can work alone or in an institution. There are also different fields within psychology. Industrial psychology focuses on problems in work environments 

Teaching is a possibility. Its a combination of meeting new people and learning new things. There is some flexibility regarding age groups.


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## Obstructions (Feb 21, 2010)

What Sigmund said. Psychiatry requires medical school, and as well you're dealing with people who may have just a small problem to ones who have no motor function at all. You need to be tolerate if a patient harms you due to there illness, and other things such as that.

Also, my mother is a medical liason for neuro medications, so she is in touch with psychiatrists from her experience, the successful ones are absolutely fascinated by the diseases, as well as somewhat a bit off the rocker. Now this doesn't mean that all physciatrists are loony, but when you go into an uncommon specialty, your going to meet more uncommon people.

But I would stick with Sigmund's suggestions of teaching or psychology.


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## Ming (Apr 7, 2010)

What kind of career choices are available if I choose psychology? 
Is it possible to be a lecturer? (I find being a university lecturer seems good as well...)

(And I am interested in psychiatry BTW. There's something about genes, brain, and other medical images that swirl around my head. I find it...cool. There's something interesting about it; but I don't know what. I was ALWAYS interested in biology/human body, especially the brain.)

I'm more interested in either a) Communications or b) Some career that involve studying the brain. c) Studying the mind.


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## Siggy (May 25, 2009)

University lecturer, yes but most have had some clinical experience. There is an option to work solely on the research end of it. like in NIMH. the national institutes of mental health.


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## firedell (Aug 5, 2009)

The thing with psychology and psychiatry is going to get the job. Not to put your dreams in the bin, or anything, but it is very competitive. So finding a job afterwards obviously will take a bit, and maybe you will have to look at jobs like counselling just to pay the bills. 

Mostly though for jobs like that, you will be over qualified.


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## Cloud_Nine (Oct 17, 2010)

Ming said:


> ENFP here, and being that, I can't decide on my career. There's too many, and they're all screaming 'EAT ME', and I can't choose.
> 
> I'm hoping to get some insight on Psychiatry, and maybe some information on careers that might be suitable for me...
> 
> ...


I did my elective rotation at a psychiatric hospital for my PharmD degree.

In psychiatry, there is definitely communication involved; it is mostly directive communication though  You will ask your patients specific questions to assess their cognitive functions. At times, you will need to use directive communication to redirect your patients' aggressive behaviors.

You will deal with patients who might hit you on the head if you don't pay attention in the hallway because you take away their on-ground privileges. It happened to a doctor while I was there. That doctor pressed charges on that patient. During my rotation at that hospital, one patient kept calling me his wife. He was obsessed about it, too. He followed me everywhere in the hallway and called me "wifie", which scared the heck out of me.

Back to the subject, psychiatry is a specialty in medicine. You must love to write and have keen observations because that is what you will be doing most of your time as a psychiatrist. You don't get paid very well. Your patients might come into a room with a gun to your head, which happened to one of the doctors in my team as an intern.

If you want to become a psychiatrist, you should focus on getting into medical school first. Psychiatry is not one of the competitive specialties to get into. During the clinical clerkship in med school , select psychiatry as your elective rotation; try to do your rotation at a site where you might want to do your residency later because your chance to gain a residency spot is much higher if you have done your clinical rotation as a med student there. Then, you will be all set to become a psychiatrist. As a psychiatrist, though, you will get hit by your patients. That is almost a guarantee.

Best wishes.


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## KateAusten (Feb 6, 2010)

Psychiatrists are actually quite in demand. It takes 4 years of med school and a psychiatric residency to become one, but once you do, getting a job should not be difficult. There are programs that will pay your med school entirely if you're willing to be a psychiatrist in a rural area, because there aren't enough to service those areas. If you want to avoid the really crazy patients like those mentioned above, you can work in an outpatient setting, where you'll mostly deal with depression, anxiety, and milder cases of other disorders.

Clinical psychologists are fairly in demand, but I think slightly less so than psychiatrists. In this position it would be important for you to understand the biological basis of mental illness, but you wouldn't be prescribing medicine. You'd do talk therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, etc. It's not necessarily any faster or easier to complete the education. Rather than med school and a residency (4 years I think), you'd have 5-7 years of PhD and most likely a postdoc year. The good thing is that you spend the whole time studying psychology instead of other medical topics, the bad thing is that if you are big on communication you might find it hard to be in academia for so long. It can feel like a bubble and make you want to escape so that you can go be amongst the "real" people of the world.


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