Psychiatry is the medical specialty dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. Long perceived as a default choice following the national ranking exams, it now attracts an increasing number of medical students who intentionally place it among their top internship preferences.
Curriculum of the DES in Psychiatry: A Training That Has Changed Its Face
A part of the new attractiveness of psychiatry is due to the overhaul of its curriculum. The new curriculum of the DES in psychiatry, gradually implemented since 2017 and revised since, has profoundly changed the content of the training.
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Interns now spend more time in outpatient settings, in child psychiatry, and in addiction medicine. This diversity of internship locations meets a strong expectation from younger generations, who want to acquire cross-disciplinary skills rather than confining themselves to a single mode of hospital practice.
This pedagogical renewal has a concrete effect on specialty choice: students who would have previously dismissed psychiatry due to a lack of visibility on the training path find it easier to envision themselves in it when they discover the variety of rotations offered. As confirmed by information from Valbreon, the path to psychiatry is much more often a vocation built over the course of internships than a choice imposed.
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Mixed City-Hospital Practice: A More Flexible Career Model in Psychiatry
The Ségur de la santé has allowed for the creation of shared positions between hospitals and medico-social structures. In psychiatry, these shared city/hospital specialist assistant positions open up professional trajectories that did not exist ten years ago.
For a young doctor, this flexibility changes the game. Sharing time between a private practice, a hospital unit, and a medico-social center helps avoid the fatigue associated with a “fully hospital-based” practice and maintains contact with diverse populations.
This model attracts profiles that would feel confined to a single practice in other specialties. Psychiatry thus becomes a specialty where one can compose their week, which is a decisive factor for medical students attentive to their professional quality of life.
Mental Health After Covid: A Demand for Care That Legitimizes the Specialty
The pandemic has made visible what psychiatrists have long documented: the prevalence of mental disorders affects a massive part of the population. According to the World Health Organization, one in five French people is affected by a psychiatric or mental disorder, which amounts to about thirteen million people.
This media visibility has produced two effects on medical students:
- A legitimacy effect: mental health has emerged from the realm of taboo to become a recognized public health issue, which enhances the discipline’s value in the eyes of future doctors.
- A demand effect: students in psychiatry internships directly observe the extent of unmet needs, which gives meaning to their commitment.
- A social recognition effect: patients and their families express a gratitude that psychiatry interns often describe as a powerful driver of their vocation.
The disorders involved cover a wide spectrum: depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, eating disorders, schizophrenia, neurodevelopmental disorders. This clinical diversity means that the psychiatrist does not treat a single pathology but a range of human situations, which appeals to students seeking intellectual complexity.
Psychiatry Internship in Externship: The Turning Point for Medical Students
Most interns who choose psychiatry describe a “revelation” that occurred during an internship. The doctor-patient relationship takes on a unique form: consultations last longer, the anamnesis occupies a central place, and listening becomes a therapeutic tool in its own right.
This experience contrasts with other internships where technical gestures take precedence over verbal exchange. For students motivated by the relational dimension of care, the psychiatry internship acts as a vocation revealer.
The specialty is not learned solely from textbooks. The skills mobilized (fine clinical assessment, ability to form therapeutic alliances, crisis management) are transmitted through mentorship, in direct contact with patients and care teams. This immersive training mode appeals to students tired of the purely bookish learning of the preclinical years.
Working Conditions in Psychiatry: What Influences the Ranking of Specialties
The choice of a medical specialty also relies on pragmatic criteria. In psychiatry, several factors work in favor of the discipline:
- Working hours, on average, remain more predictable than in surgical specialties or emergency medicine, which attracts doctors concerned with balancing professional and personal life.
- Private practice in psychiatry is economically viable, with a demand for consultations that far exceeds the available supply in most areas.
- Mental disorders account for a significant portion of absenteeism at work, ensuring a sustainable structural need for the specialty and thus job security.
Psychiatry offers a rare diversity of practice modes among medical specialties: hospital-based, private, mixed, judicial expertise, clinical research, addiction medicine, liaison psychiatry in general hospitals. The same practitioner can change settings multiple times throughout their career without changing specialties.
The demographic factor enhances this attractiveness. The retirements of psychiatrists trained in the 1980s create a demand that faculties are still struggling to meet, placing young graduates in a position of choice in the medical job market. For a medical student who hesitates between several specialties at the time of ranking, this security of job prospects provides a concrete argument that mere vocation does not always suffice.