Therapist Unlimited Blog

Children and adolescents in the United States are in dire need of sufficient number of child and adolescent psychiatrists who will cater to their medical condition.
According to the latest data released by the U.S. Surgeon General, it was discovered that there are only an estimate 7418 practicing child and adolescent psychiatrists serving  73,675,6002 children and adolescents in the US.
The information released by the US Surgeon General also bared that 20 percent of children and adolescents have a mental disorder with at least a mild functional impairment in the US.
To address this problem a bill sponsored by Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) dubbed as The Child Health Care Crisis Relief Act had been introduced in the House of Representatives.
The pending bills seeks to support loan repayment, scholarships, clinical training grants, and education grants for children’s mental health professionals including: behavioural paediatricians, child and adolescent psychiatrists, child psychologists, school psychologists, school social workers, school counsellors, psychiatric nurses, and marriage and family therapists.

A crisis for child and adolescent psychiatrists now looms in the United States of America.

Child and adolescent psychiatry is the only medical specialty that comprehensively trains physicians to assess and treat children and adolescents’ mental illnesses.
Only averages of 300 child and adolescent psychiatrists complete training each year.
Overwhelming educational debt, pressure and incentives to pursue a primary care career, a long training period, and reimbursement problems discourage medical students from choosing child and adolescent psychiatry.