More on Psychologists

The May 17 issue includes an article discussing the appointment of a psychologist to head the Yale Child Study Center. I do not have information on all the factors that led to this discussion but can comment on the broader implication of this action, which was not addressed in the article.

Currently we are experiencing a crisis in recruiting and retaining psychiatric researchers. This crisis is most profound in child psychiatry. To address this crisis, we need to first focus on enhancing research training in general and child and adolescent psychiatry residency training.

Then it is essential that the route into child psychiatry training be shortened and streamlined without interference with the quality of training. This will increase the number of child psychiatry practitioners and researchers. We now experience a severe shortage of both.