Ontario urged to provide incentives in bid to reverse psychiatrist shortage

A new report urges the Ontario government to offer incentives to psychiatrists in order to make up for a shortage it says is contributing to a growing mental health crisis across the province and the country.

The report, released last week by the Coalition of Ontario Psychiatrists, says the province should also increase the number of psychiatry residency spots available to medical students and increase exposure to the field in medical school to six weeks. The organization, which represents 1,900 Ontario psychiatrists, says boosting the ranks in psychiatry would help improve access to mental health at a time when demand continues to outpace supply, particularly in rural areas.

It says that while Canada as a whole is experiencing a shortage of psychiatrists, the situation in Ontario is “uniquely difficult to manage and continues to persist and deepen” despite a rise in psychiatrists’ workload.

The report says the average number of patients each Ontario psychiatrist sees per year outside of a hospital setting has gone up to 249 in 2013 from 208 a decade earlier, and psychiatrists are working, on average, an extra eight hours a week compared with 2007. The shortage is linked in the report to the large number of psychiatrists nearing retirement age, combined with a lack of a younger cohort to succeed them. “Virtually all psychiatric care will be impacted by this demographic shift as over half of practising psychiatrists approach retirement,” the report says. “These statistics are particularly concerning for rural communities, which are notoriously difficult to recruit new doctors to. A disproportionate number of near retirement psychiatrists currently serve these areas, and often see high volumes of patients to compensate for the access issues.” And though enrolment in medical school is growing, the percentage of applicants choosing psychiatry is declining, the report says. “Governments are investing a significant amount of money into improving mental health services, which is great ... ( but) there’s some

issues with access to treatment at this point,” said Dr. Mathieu Dufour, the coalition’s co-chair. If the shortage worsens, wait times for treatment will rise, he said. The gap is particularly high when it comes to child psychiatry, which has seen a “sharp increase” in demand, he said. Increasing pay for psychiatrists would also make the profession more appealing, he said, noting that some medical specialties earn up to four times more.