Wrongful Status

The Department of Veterans Affairs does not give proper recognition to psychiatry as a medical specialty; it is treated merely as a component of the mental health service line. Psychologists, nurses, social workers, and psychiatrists are equally eligible to chair the department.

Psychiatry is being politicized when it needs support as a science. Patients come to VA or private medical centers for serious psychiatric problems needing the service of physicians. VA policymakers are feeding into the antipsychiatry sentiment by making psychiatry an outcast from medicine.

To endorse such a system, there are obviously psychiatrists in the VA hierarchy with identity problems. It filters out prospective newcomers with professional dignity and is humiliating to those who choose a VA career.