How many years would it take to become a Psychiatrist?

3 Answers

• Four years of college – any major, as long as you take the pre-requisite science/math courses. GPA of at least 3.5; high score on MCATs.

  Four years of medical school. During that time, you will have a brief course in psychiatry [just the basics] and will do a rotation in psychiatry [clinical exposure]. During med school, you will begin to take the three-part National Board Exams, and in the fourth year, you will sign up for NIRMP matching program to be matched with an internship [one year, optional for psychiatry] or residency [three years for psychiatry]. At the end of residency you will take the Psych/Neurology Boards for certification. Residency may be followed by a fellowship, if further specialization or research is your interest.

  Internship and residency are paid [modestly] positions, with 80-hour work weeks and 24-36-hour on-call shifts, during which you stay on site in the hospital and hope that you can grab a couple of hours of sleep and gulp down a sandwich. The second and third years of residency are somewhat less hectic, usually.

  Medical school is VERY expensive [with few, if any scholarships], very intense and requires extreme dedication. There is little time to work, except during the brief summer break, or, perhaps in a lab at the school/hospital.

  Psychiatrists do much more than “push pills”. They do prescribe medication, but must often patiently go through a series of trial-and-error situations to find the right medication for a particular person. They also practice different forms of what is usually called “talk therapy”, e.g. cognitive behavioral therapy, psychoanalysis [which requires even further training than listed above and is not as popular now as it once was, group therapy, Davanloo’s Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy, etc, etc].

  It’s a very long road, but is very rewarding for someone who is dedicated to helping people.

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  RE:

  How many years would it take to become a Psychiatrist?

  i want to become a psychiatrist but i will like to know how many years in school would it take me

  please be specific

  for example: 4yrs at university major in psychology

• 4 years in university majoring in aboslutely anything not neccessarily psychology.

  And a few more years in medical school focusing on psychiatry for part of that time.

  Psychiatrists typically spend 10 to 15 minutes with a patient prescribe some drugs and go on to the next mental case. It doesn’t require a psychology degree at any level.