In den Vereinigten Staaten herrscht ein gravierender und wachsender Mangel an Ärzten, die auf die psychiatrische Versorgung Erwachsener spezialisiert sind. Untersuchungen belegen, dass die Nachfrage nach diesen medizinischen Fachkräften im nächsten Jahrzehnt stark zunehmen wird, während das verfügbare Angebot abnimmt.
New study projects a massive shortage of adult psychiatrists in the United States
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A recent [study](https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.20250467) published in Psychiatric Services suggests that the United States is facing a severe and growing shortage of medical doctors who specialize in adult mental health care. The research provides evidence that the demand for these medical professionals will sharply increase over the next decade while the available supply decreases. This shrinking workforce is expected to make it increasingly difficult for adult patients to access mental health care, especially in rural communities.
The demand for mental health treatment in the United States has been rising steadily as public awareness grows and more people seek help. At the same time, a large portion of currently practicing medical doctors are approaching retirement age. This combination of factors puts intense pressure on the overall health care system.
Within mental health care, medical doctors who specialize in treating adult mental illnesses play a highly specific and necessary role. These professionals are equipped to prescribe medications and manage complex psychiatric conditions that other mental health workers cannot treat alone.
Recent observations suggest that fewer of these specialized doctors are choosing to participate in health insurance networks. This lack of insurance participation makes it harder for average patients to find affordable care. Barriers to accessing specialized medical treatment can lead to worse health outcomes for vulnerable populations. Yet, very few up-to-date assessments have measured whether the country actually has enough of these professionals to meet the growing need.
Alternatively: guillotines will solve the mental health crisis too. Much cheaper.
Doesn’t help that a majority in the field are dogshit at what they do.
At least it comes at a point where a third of the country hasn’t lost their mind.
Have we actually tried to incentivize people to go into mental health?
Yeah but plenty of „pre-licensed professionals“ arr happy to sell their services at the same cost
>Recent observations suggest that fewer of these specialized doctors are choosing to participate in health insurance networks. This lack of insurance participation makes it harder for average patients to find affordable care.
Its all healthcare in the US. How many different ways and studies do we need that point to our system being fundamentally flawed?
The US healthcare system is a business. Its about making money. Its core value is about dollars. Until that is fixed and we all have universal healthcare that isnt tied to some form of income/employment, we will continue to swirl the drain.
Yeah, when all those in the cult needs help acclaiming to life outside the cult, they are going to have a long wait list.
It doesn’t help that a lot of mental health care just frankly isn’t very good. This is coming from someone who is reliant on it and had dozens of „professionals“ involved. Many times it’s just very short appointments, and „are you feeling better? no? let’s try some different med“. I don’t blame everything on the doctors, but the field itself is very poorly understood, understudied, and the medications are just in their early phases. Remember, prozac wasn’t approved until 1974. The „tests“ for many mental health conditions are just lists of general questions that get tabulated into a score. There’s no blood test, there’s no brain scan, there’s very limited testing and diagnosis ability, and without that, it’s hard to be able to use the same tests to find out if a treatment is effective.
If mental healthcare was more effective, we wouldn’t be having to go see someone every few weeks or every month. My other serious medical issues I see a professional every 6 months. Just making things more effective would reduce the load on the mental health system by a huge factor.
We’ve incentivized people in identifying their conditions, but my number one issue with the entire concept of mental healthcare is that it’s so wishy-washy as something that’s almost entirely dependent on self diagnosis.
Case-in-point, if you self identify, then you’re almost always automatically treated. If you don’t, well then anyone around you is a monster for suggesting you might need help, and you don’t get treated. We used to have these things called asylums, and we need to bring them back instead of letting people wander the streets, hurting themselves. I suppose this brings us back to there being a shortage of help.
What happened to all the women that got psychology degrees 10yrs ago? Did they leave the workforce for some reason?
Theres little mental healthcare in America. You could probably erase the mental part of that sentence and it’d still be true. In Los Angeles, you see the mentally ill suffering on the streets every day. It doesn’t seem like a good existence.
That’s why in Ohio we made up a graduate program and license so you can prescribe medications! Certified Mental Health Assistant.
They have caps on residencies. They aren’t providing debt relief to students. Hospitals are prioritizing shareholder profit over making working conditions and staff pay bearable. They openly exploited and abused their staff so horribly during the pandemic that many professionals left the field. Hospitals are closing left and right because of private insurance and pharma. Providing properly equipped staff and decent affordable healthcare in no longer the objective. Why would anyone feel motivated to pursue this career? Healthcare might always have a demand but as long as its behind a corporate paywall that requires a steep price to pay into and work, its always going to have staffing issues. Business does not belong in healthcare.
I’m currently a student working on a Master’s of Social Work so that I can be a mental health professional. I am finished internship and only have 2 classes left.
This program is ridiculous. I work full time as most master’s students do. During internship you are required to work in that internship at least 15 hours per week, on top of that you have to take 2 classes, while working full time. My mental and physical health have suffered greatly die to the requirements of this program.
As someone who has already earned a masters in biology, I can say that there are many requirements of this program that are completely unreasonable and unnecessary. The classes repeat the same things over and over.
I am in this program because I see the need. However, I can understand why people don’t. It’s grueling for no reason.
Send me to school for free and I’d GLADLY go into this field. This is what I’m interested in, I’m just not interested in the debt.
As someone who has worked in psychiatry as a tech, its a horrible, cruel, cold, and uncaring field. One psychiatric nurse practitioner i worked with actually supported the idea of lobotomizing patients. The field teaches that any mental health disorder just need drugs to fix it and that’s patently wrong. The future is psychology, therapy combined with medication,
and the bio-psycho-social model of mental illness
Been waiting for a therapist for 4 months
Piffle. The rich want us to die faster.
Making the cost of a medical education in the US more expensive and then shutting the door to foreign-trained physicians certainly won’t help alleviate the shortage.
Dementia is taking my mother out of the adult mental health game, she was once a pro, now she’s a client
All the jobs we really need that requires a degree aren’t being pushed more in grade school as careers. I’d say even now we need more mental health jobs as a low percentage of the population has went to an expert. However a high amount of people have mental health problems.
Wait times for my patients can be months. Medicare or Medicaid?
##Good luck
We try to manage most simple diagnoses in primary care, but can be a headache for bipolar, schizoaffective, treatment resistant depression…
Sure, sure… take on a quarter million in debt to get this degree, and graduate right around the same time that AI takes your job.
Fool me once…
AI is going to revolutionize medicine. Sit tight.
This just gives me more fuel to keep going.
This and my brother committing suicide is one of the primary reasons I’m currently going through my nursing degree to pursue my PMHNP, so that I can service rural communities in the intermountain west.
I don’t think I would get accepted to any psychiatrist programs because they only accept so many students at a time and it would take way longer than the path I’m currently on.
The amount of people out here that don’t have access to mental health services, including prescribers, due to health insurance or stigma is alarming. I’d also really love to do VA work if at all a possibility.
Psych NP will be in demand then
For perspective, I’m a psychiatrist working with an adult population.
I don’t think this shortage will be isolated to mental health, but will likely be the case across all medical specialties moving forward. Being able to afford medical school is now a pipe dream for many people. Even if you can afford it, it’s a long and difficult path. The expectations being placed on medical providers in our current system is bordering on (or has already become) unsustainable. With insurance, PE, and corporate interests worming their way into the fabric of how care is provided, we’re left with more expensive, lower quality, and less patient centric medical care.
Until we can decide as a society that everyone deserves access to affordable/quality healthcare AND can structure a system that supports doctors/nurses/techs in their pursuit of delivering that care, I don’t think any of this will change for the better.
It’s almost like medical personnel don’t want to live in a country that demonizes them!
They should let psychologists prescribe medicine. Psychiatrists can then handle the heavier cases.
Maybe if MD and DO pay wasn’t massively lagging behind inflation and we actually valued the amount of effort required to enter psychiatry this wouldn’t be a problem.
Most people don’t want to spend $300k+ and be 30+ when they can finally have a career. Maybe make residency less miserable and medical school more affordable.