how "hot" is child psychiatry right now?

[prominence]

i have heard that there is a shortage of child psychiatrists, and hence the demand for them.

but, how prevalent are child psychiatric cases?

besides mental ******ation, attention deficit disorder, bulemia/anorexia, and depressed teens, what other cases do child pscyhaitrists see?

also, does the demand for child psychitarists correlate with their salary figures?

i am considering psych as one of my career options. i am trying to get to know more about the field before i do my 3rd year psych rotation later this year. any helpful info would be appreciated. thank you.

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[Asher]

There is a shortage of child psychiatrists in most markets; consequently, you can pretty much do fee for service.

On the interview trail, probably 40-50% of the people I've met are considering child psych. A few residents have told me that a lot of people plan to go into child psych but decided to do adult instead once they get into residency. One frustration about the field, I would think, is that many of the children's problems are related to their parents/other home situations and you can be very limited (short of a parent-ectomy) in fixing that.

If you are considering child psych, you might want to plan a fourth year elective in that field since many schools don't include exposure to it during the third year rotation. Another thing to consider when looking for residency programs is whether or not the school has a child fellowship and how strong it is. Also look to see if there are inpatient child rotations for general psych residents and how early in the curriculum you get child exposure. I think it would be hard to decided to do a fellowship in child if you don't get any experience in it until your third year of residency and some programs restrict the inpatient child experiences to fellows.