The troubling reason it’s so hard to find a psychiatrist in the United States

The past decade has witnessed a flurry of federal legislation intended to improve coverage of mental health treatment within private and public sector insurance plans. Why then do research studies continue to document that even people with health insurance often have difficulty finding a psychiatrist? Two new studies of the state of the psychiatric profession help explain this frustrating situation.

A study led by Professor Tara Bishop of Weill Cornell Medical College calculated changes in the number of physicians engaged in different types of practice from 2003 to 2013. The number of adult primary-care physicians increased by 9.5 percent and the number of neurologists increased by 35.7 percent. In contrast, the number of psychiatrists declined by 0.2 percent, which represents a 10.2 percent drop in availability when the decade’s population growth is taken into account.

However, another study by Bishop’s team found that although almost all non-psychiatric physicians accept private or public insurance, only about half of psychiatrists do so. Improving mental health insurance benefits thus isn’t going to make finding a psychiatrist much easier in the short-term, even though it may help in the long-term by tempting more psychiatrists to start accepting insurance.

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I see nurse practitioners , I have no complaints

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I’d love to be a psychiatrist. Unfortunately there’s no way I can get into med school at this time in life so I’m aiming for becoming a nurse practioner currently.

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I like the 2 nurse practitioners I’ve seen they are very caring compassionate people. The psychiatrists I’ve seen only in the hospital, have nothing good to say except for 1 woman with her med student intern.

My chief complaint is that nobody talked to me, nobody except my nurse practitioners outside of the hospital.

Those family people should understand that nobody talks to you especially inside the hospital. Yet they’re spending tons of money on mostly wasted time in the United States anyway.

I never saw a psychiatrist when I went to the old mental health clinic, always nurse practitioners. I saw one psychiatrist who was a total dick. ( pardon the language) he put me on a very low dose of risperidone that I had been on two times before and it didn’t work but he refused to raise it.

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I think the psyiatrists I’ve seen are jerks too. They don’t talk to me whatsoever, just force me to swallow something and it doesn’t seem to matter what or if it even works

The doctor I’m seeing is 75 years old. I don’t want him to retire. I feel I can’t replace him.

Here in the USA, I’ve seen a number of psychiatrists for whom English was a second language.

Jayster

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I have also had bad experiences with 2/3 psychiatrists I’ve seen. I see a nurse practioner as well and she is wonderful, I do therapy with her and she prescribes my medicine and in my opinion that’s how it should be done. She has more education than a regular therapist and more hands-on experience with serious mental illness. It’s true psychiatrists aren’t there to talk they’re there to diagnose and medicate and that’s the ugly truth of it.

I have a Medicaid psychiatrist and she is fantastic. I’ve been very lucky.

I see a psychopharmacologist - she does both therapy as well as prescribes medicine. She’s fantastic. My experience with pure psychiatrists has been pretty poor, like a lot of people’s here seems to have been. Didn’t listen to anything I said, I had to bring in my mom to back me up. My mom was also deeply unimpressed with the psychiatrists I saw.

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I have had good and bad psychiatrists.

Seven years ago I called to get a psychiatrist. Most places had waits of up to 3 months. Am currently seeing a resident / trainee psychiatrist.

Psychiatry is the lowest paid specialist physician.

Not hard to get a psychiatrist in Canada. Hard to get a good one. Even harder to see him/her/it for more than five minutes. God bless public pay health care. (Not.)

It’s very easy to find a good pdoc here in Portugal. God bless free health care :smile: @shutterbug

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Guessing you haven’t run into rationing…

Sep 2001: Pacemaker fails, ordered onto bed rest as walking more than 50 feet makes my face turn blue.

Nov 2001: Finally get surgery date for January 2002.

Dec 2001: Surgery postponed because hospital used up its allotted funding for the year and my pacemaker surgery was considered ‘elective’.

Mar 2002: FINALLY get my emergency/elective pacemaker replacement.

The asshats who run our health care system in Alberta, Canada, are damn lucky it’s not legal to beat up morons or they’d all be missing their front teeth.

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I was just messing with you, it has it’s problems: long waiting lists, good doctors if your lucky, etc. But for my financial situation I thank the holy potato (or the fsm, depending on the hunger) for free health care.

I live in a fairly large city, there are only 2 psychiatrists who take my insurance, the rest only take cash.

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I am a hippy. I thought the answer was to get away from money. Live and learn.

The world doesn’t treat sick people without money very well.

I got my wisdom from my Mom. But she was barely more than a babe herself. She told me that people on welfare lived very well. I didn’t know.

Jayster