Getting Psychiatrists Where Needed

Every year there are many residents looking for work in psychiatry in underserved areas all over the United States. These positions offer loan forgiveness to U.S. medical graduates and J-1 visa waiver opportunities to international medical graduates. However, the number of positions in underserved areas far exceeds the number of residents seeking to fill them.

If this pattern continues, there will be more underserved areas without psychiatrists and in turn more people with mental illness not able to get care. As psychiatrists and APA members, we need to put addressing this issue at the top of our to-do list.

Among the remedies we might consider are to increase the number of psychiatry residents in programs in or near underserved areas, to encourage residents to take electives in such areas, to provide more incentives for working in underserved areas, and to simplify the J-1 visa waiver application process for international medical graduates.

We need to address this problem now while it is still manageable rather than just “wait and see.”