Professorships in child and adolescent psychiatry relative to a similarly sized medical specialty in the UK and Ireland: cross-sectional study.

Kelleher, Ian, Poziemska, Aleksandra Z., Kieseppä, Valentina, Thapar, Anita ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3689-737X, Dubicka, Bernadka, Lockhart, Elaine, Ford, Tamsin, Minnis, Helen, Gallagher, Louise, McNicholas, Fiona and O'Hare, Kirstie 2025. Professorships in child and adolescent psychiatry relative to a similarly sized medical specialty in the UK and Ireland: cross-sectional study. The British Journal of Psychiatry 10.1192/bjp.2024.179

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Abstract

A youth mental health crisis is considered one of the great challenges of our time, and research and clinical services in child and adolescent psychiatry have become a priority for governments and funders. Academic leadership is needed to drive forward research. It is not clear how many senior academic leadership posts (professorships) there are in child and adolescent psychiatry, nor how this benchmarks against a similarly sized medical specialty. This study aimed to determine the number of professorships in child and adolescent psychiatry in the UK and Ireland compared to a similarly sized specialty. A secondary aim was to identify the number of clinical trials registered for mental and behavioural disorders in children. We identified registered specialists in child and adolescent psychiatry and a similarly sized specialty who held full professorships in medical schools. We searched the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) and ClinicalTrials.gov for trials. As of 23 March 2023, there were 1725 doctors on the General Medical Council's (GMC) specialist register in child and adolescent psychiatry. The closest specialty in terms of number of registered specialists was neurology ( = 1724). We identified 24 professors in child and adolescent psychiatry across the UK and Ireland, compared to 124 in neurology. For every intervention trial registered for mental and behavioural disorders in children, there were approximately ten trials registered for diseases of the nervous system. Despite equivalent numbers of medical specialists in child and adolescent psychiatry and neurology, there is a striking disparity in the number of professorship appointments. While young peoples' mental health has, ostensibly, become a priority for policy-makers and funders, this is not reflected in medical professorship appointments. The paucity of senior academic child and adolescent psychiatrists has real-world implications for training, research, innovation and service development in mental health services.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Medicine
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
ISSN:	0007-1250
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	21 February 2025
Date of Acceptance:	11 July 2024
Last Modified:	21 Feb 2025 12:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/176377

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