Minority Med Students Get Insider's View of Psychiatry

A group of more than 30 minority medical students in the Washington, D.C., area met with leaders of the Washington Psychiatric Society (WPS) over dinner one evening in January to consider the idea of pursuing a career in psychiatry.

As they sat around the table, APA leaders and D.C.-area psychiatrists working “in the trenches” spoke to the students about their odysseys into successful careers as psychiatric researchers, professors, and practitioners.

The dinner was an initiative of APA's District Branch Minority Recruitment Program, established by the American Psychiatric Foundation with the support of AstraZeneca in 2002 to recruit minorities to the psychiatric workforce.

Second-, third-, and fourth-year medical students from Georgetown University, Howard University, and George Washington University got an insider's perspective on how to navigate a psychiatry residency, how to get involved in psychiatric research, and what it is like to treat patients in a private practice.

“Recently, the field of psychiatry has exploded with new findings and discoveries,” said William Lawson, M.D., Ph.D., chair of psychiatry at Howard University. Lawson, who chaired the dinner meeting, also pointed out that minority practitioners are underrepresented in psychiatry.

This was a point further emphasized by Annelle Primm, M.D., who graduated from Howard University's medical school in 1980 before beginning her career in psychiatry and is now director of APA's Office of Minority and National Affairs.

“We have low percentages of ethnic and minority practitioners in psychiatry and in the mental health profession in general,” she said. She described the many opportunities available to minority medical students through APA, including research fellowships in HIV/AIDS psychiatry and substance abuse, among other offerings.

There is no better time to get involved in psychiatric research than the present, according to Muhamad Aly Rifai, M.D., who is an Area 3 member-in-training (MIT) deputy representative to APA's Assembly and the National Institute of Mental Health MIT representative at the WPS.

“This is an exciting time in psychiatry,” Rifai said. “We are in the process of discovering new clues about how we can better diagnose, treat, and even prevent mental illness.”

Rifai explained that there is a “lack of knowledge about mental illness in minority patients” and that the manifestations of certain mental illnesses may be influenced by a patient's culture.

He also described for the medical students a number of opportunities to participate in research on schizophrenia, mood and anxiety disorders, and child and adolescent psychiatry through the NIMH intramural research program.

It was only when he entered the psychiatry residency program at George Washington University that Niku Singh, M.D., began to feel “like a real practitioner of medicine,” he said. Singh is a PGY-3 resident and an MIT representative to the WPS.

Psychiatry residents see patients in a variety of settings ranging from state-hospital facilities to outpatient settings, Singh said, and get extensive exposure to psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic modes of treatment. “You get to be a jack of all trades” as a psychiatry resident, Singh declared.

The students also heard about what inspired some of the speakers to choose psychiatry and what continues to inspire them today.

By her fourth year of medical school at Georgetown University, Constance Dunlap, M.D., had decided that she would pursue a career in obstetrics/gynecology.

“As a medical student, I didn't even consider psychiatry,” she recalled.

But her experience working alongside a psychiatrist during an internship on a maternity ward changed her mind, she said, and she entered a psychiatry residency program at George Washington University.

These days, Dunlap is an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University and Howard University, where she teaches residents. She also maintains a private practice in which she treats adult patients with mood and anxiety disorders.

“There is something appealing about being able to maintain relationships with my patients” over time, Dunlap noted.

Child and adolescent psychiatrist Marilyn Benoit, M.D., called her subspecialty “the most fascinating” in psychiatry and told the students that “every adult has a wounded child within.” Benoit is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University and past president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

In her fourth year of medical school at Georgetown University in the early 1970s, Benoit became pregnant. Soon after giving birth, she embarked on a research project that required her to interview families of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in their homes.

“I took [my baby] along in a little basket, and we went to the homes of the children,” she recalled. “He was an easy baby.”

Benoit remarked that one of the “privileges” of having practiced for more than 25 years is seeing patients with their families many years after their first session. “Because that single person got treatment, that has made a difference and enabled him or her to become a parent,” she said.

In addition, Benoit marveled that she has been alive to witness advances in brain research “that tell us that these illnesses are not made up—these people have real illnesses, and we can administer treatments we know will work.”

Information about APA's District Branch Minority Recruitment Program is available by contacting Barbara Matos at (703) 907-8517 or by e-mail at [email protected].▪