By: The Capella University Editorial Team with Irene Abrego Nicolet, PhD, NCSP, LSSP, Vice President and Dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Reading Time: 12 minutes
Two things matter a lot when you’re researching how to become a psychiatrist: how long the path takes, and whether the work will be worth it.
Psychiatry is a medical career, so the educational journey is longer than counseling or psychology, and the requirements are more rigorous. It’s also one of the few mental health careers where you can prescribe medication, diagnose complex conditions and treat the full picture of someone’s health.
What makes psychiatrists distinct is their medical foundation. Psychiatrists are licensed physicians who specialize in mental health, which means they bring an understanding of the brain, body and the way the two interact. That foundation shapes their training. It also defines the kind of care psychiatrists can provide.
Discover the steps to becoming a psychiatrist and the skills that will support your advancement in this field.
A psychiatrist is a licensed medical doctor who specializes in diagnosing and treating mental health conditions. Psychiatrists support patients who are experiencing emotional or psychiatric challenges ranging from depression and anxiety to bipolar disorder, PTSD or schizophrenia.
Because they complete both medical school and psychiatric training, psychiatrists are in a unique position to evaluate both the mental and physical factors that influence a person’s health. Psychiatry professionals do this by combining elements of medicine, neuroscience and behavioral health.
As a psychiatrist, your responsibilities involve:
Psychiatry tends to be a collaborative profession. If this is a career pathway you choose to follow, you may find yourself working alongside psychologists, counselors, nurses, primary care physicians and social workers to provide more holistic care for your patients.
A psychiatrist’s day-to-day work might include reviewing medical histories, meeting with patients, adjusting medications, conducting assessments and consulting with other healthcare providers. That said, the roles and responsibilities of a psychiatrist can vary by employment setting or the state you’re licensed to practice in.
Psychiatrists generally follow a linear pathway to meet the core education requirements for preparing for practice, and this includes medical school.
Remember that licensure and certification requirements may vary by state. That means it’s important to conduct your own research to ensure you understand what you need to do to become a psychiatrist in your state.
Becoming a psychiatrist involves several key educational and professional milestones. By understanding what each stage looks like, you’ll be able to plan ahead and build a realistic picture of what your career pathway will look like.
Your first step is to earn a bachelor’s degree. Many students choose subjects that align with medical school prerequisites and their interests in health and science.
These could include:
Psychology is a particularly popular program for aspiring psychiatrists because of its shared focus on mental and behavioral health. At Capella, we offer a psychology degree specializing in pre-counseling and therapy designed to help you build a foundation in fundamental counseling theories and practices.
By completing a relevant bachelor’s degree, you’ll likely be able to complete some of the prerequisite coursework that medical schools often require in areas like biology, chemistry and physics.
Academic performance plays a key role in the medical school admissions process. That means you’ll need a strong GPA and you’ll need to prepare for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). This is the standardized test that most medical schools use to decide who’s admitted.
Extracurricular experiences like clinical volunteering and physician shadowing can also give you valuable exposure to healthcare environments throughout your bachelor’s program, which may strengthen your medical school application after graduating. Many Capella bachelor’s programs include capstone projects that enable you to apply theory in real-world settings. This ensures you know how all of the concepts you’ve learned work in practice.
Medical school is where you develop the medical knowledge and clinical skills it takes to become a medical doctor.
Many students who want a career in psychiatry tend to pursue a Doctor of Medicine (MD) or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) degree. MDs focus on diagnosing and treating specific illnesses, while DOs take a more holistic, preventive care approach. However, both degrees may support you in your journey to becoming a psychiatrist.
Regardless of the degree type you select, the first two years of your medical school experience will be classroom-focused. You’ll explore subjects like:
From there, you move into clinical rotations. These are supervised experiences in which you work directly with patients while rotating through different medical specialties like pediatrics, surgery or psychiatry. These rotations give you the opportunity to observe different specialties and explore your interests.
After completing your rotations, you must complete a licensing exam. The exam you’ve got to take will depend on your medical school pathway. MD students normally take the USMLE, and DO students take the COMLEX-USA. Both exams involve a multi-step process, and passing is required if you want to move on to the next phase of your training.
Residency is a period of supervised clinical practice that allows you to develop specialized expertise within your chosen field. Residency gives you the chance to get hands-on practice working with patients who are experiencing a wide range of mental health conditions.
Most medical doctors get a residency placement through the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP). This is a nationwide program that matches applicants with participating residency programs, and most early residency programs include exposure in a number of areas, like neurology and emergency medicine.
After completing your “intern” year, where you rotate around various areas, the rest of your residency focuses on psychiatric settings. This enables you to build specialist skills around everything from diagnostic assessment and psychiatric evaluation to crisis intervention and medication management.
Treatment environments you might be working in include outpatient clinics, hospitals or community mental health centers. You’ll be directly under the supervision of experienced psychiatrists, and will gradually earn more responsibility as your confidence and knowledge grow.
Residency requirements often vary by state. But generally speaking, most residency programs last for four years.
After completing your residency, you must obtain a medical license in the state in which you want to practice. Licensure requirements vary by state. However, they generally include graduating medical school, completing residency training, and passing the relevant licensing exam.
You may also choose to obtain a voluntary board certification. The most common certification is through the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN), and it’s separate from state licensure. Certification demonstrates your expertise and normally has additional eligibility requirements.
While this is the complete pathway to practice, it’s worth noting that the journey rarely ends here. Psychiatrists generally engage in ongoing learning and continuing professional development (CPD) study throughout their careers to ensure they’re always current on developments in mental health research and treatment.
Within psychiatry, you can specialize in different fields. A good way to explore specializations is often through a fellowship training program.
Fellowships enable you to develop advanced education and clinical experience that focuses on very specific patient populations or treatment approaches and explore psychiatric specialties.
This list is not exhaustive, and other specializations exist. If you’re interested in a particular area, it’s important to conduct your own research to find out what fellowships might be available and the requirements involved.
To succeed in psychiatry, it takes more than just medical knowledge. Psychiatrists are expected to combine their clinical expertise with a range of interpersonal and professional skills that support effective patient care.
As a psychiatrist, these skills can help support you day in and day out as you work to address crisis intervention, psychiatric evaluations and long-term patient management.
If you’ve been exploring a career in psychiatry, you’ll have come across a few other professions, including psychology, counseling and social work, that appear quite similar at face value. These professionals often work together and straddle the same areas.
However, their education requirements, responsibilities and scope of practice do differ.
The key distinction between psychiatry and psychology, counseling and social work is that only psychiatry requires a medical degree.
Psychologists do normally pursue a doctoral degree, but they don’t have to go to medical school. Meanwhile, many social workers and counselors are able to achieve licensure after completing a master’s degree. That being said, all of these professions require licensure at the state level, and clinical experience or supervised hours of practice may be required.
If you’re interested in a career in mental health, you can make a direct impact in the lives of others through a number of career paths. If you’re wondering what the trajectory looks like in other fields, Capella offers a range of accredited online psychology, social work and counseling degree programs designed to help working adults achieve their professional goals without putting the rest of their lives on hold.
These professionals may work in a variety of environments from schools and community organizations to hospitals and private practice settings, and some of our degrees are available in different learning formats to support your schedule and lifestyle.
Select programs are available in the FlexPath learning format, which enables you to work through our competency-based curriculum at your own pace. All programs are available in the GuidedPath format, which gives you 24/7 access to coursework with scheduled deadlines to keep you on track.
If you’re keen to pursue a career in mental health, psychiatry is one of the more intensive pathways. It’s a profession that requires years of medical training, residency experience and lots of ongoing professional development. But it’s a career that can lead to highly meaningful work supporting patients across many stages of care.
Alternatively, you could explore mental health careers in areas like psychology, counseling and behavioral health to enable you to support community health and the emotional wellbeing of patients without having to attend medical school. At Capella, you can explore online degrees in areas including marriage and family therapy, clinical psychology, school counseling, social work and more.
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