Psychiatric News March 4, 2005
Volume 40 Number 5
© 2005 American Psychiatric Association
p. 12
Minority Med Students Get Insider's View of Psychiatry
Eve Bender
APA and district branches partner to show minority medical students the
many career paths they can follow if they specialize in psychiatry.
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Presenters at the Washington Psychiatric Society spoke to area medical
students about the need for minorities in the psychiatric workforce. From left
are Niku Singh, M.D., Annelle Primm, M.D., Constance Dunlap, M.D., William
Lawson, M.D., Ph.D., and Aly Rifai, M.D. Not pictured is Marilyn Benoit,
M.D. Eve Bender
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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
bmatos{at}psych.org.
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