Advice on career in philosophy/psychiatry?

Question

I need advice as to what career I can pursue based on my interests. I am interested in philosophy and trying to figure out the nature of reality. I'm interested in how the mind works (or brain) and how and why certain substances/chemicals alter perception. Based on this, I thought I could be a psychiatrist and continue studying philosophy. I don't want to be merely a psychologist because I want to know more on how certain drugs affect the mind and how the body relates to that. However, I don't know if I support all psychiatric practices such as ECT or certain drugs. I don't know if they are harmful, yet I'm still really interested in finding out more and perhaps revolutionizing psychiatry into something better. Is this a good plan, or do you have any other suggestions based on my interests?

Answer 1

I suggest you go to graduate school, probably a doctorate program in philosophy in which you can study the mind-body problem.  You can create a program and include as your thesis/research advisor a physician or psychiatrist, who can guide your study with respect to drugs and chemicals.  You will probably have to take some courses in biology, organic chemistry, and biochemistry, and then some specialized courses in physiological chemistry to prepare you for what you want to study.  To be a psychiatrist requires a medical school program, and you don't want to practice medicine.  All you really need is to have a background in the biology and physiology of the brain, and you can spend a couple of semesters getting sufficient background for that without going to med school or becoming a clinical psychologist.

Take the courses and do some heavy reading, and you will know what you need to when you have someone on the orals qualifying examination committee who includes a psychiatrist and psychologist.  Good luck.

Answer 2

I have an MD with a residency in Psychiatry as well as a PhD in Biochemistry. Currently I study the Neurobiology of Mood and Feeding Behaviors. Its a pretty cool life, but it took about 12 years of school (60-80 hours/week) to get here.

If you don't want to go to school that long, there are number of other options. I work with a lot of people who went to graduate school in Neuroscience. Also you can consider Experimental Psychology. There is a lot work on functional neuroimaging where you study drug effects in actual humans.

During residency you will do a lot of rotations at different sites and will probably be exposed to things you may not agree with (like ECT), but that doesn't mean you have to do those things once you finish training. I don't think that you will find ECT nearly as bad as you think it is.

Psychiatry is the only field with broad overlap with Philosophy. There are a limited number of jobs studying the philiosophy and psychiatry mainly at major Universities. These jobs are very competitive.