By Stacey Ritzen, WCI Contributor
Psychiatry is not a medical field for the faint of heart. On average, it takes at least 12 years to become a psychiatrist, and some psychiatrists may also pursue further training by attending a fellowship to learn one of nine psychiatry subspecialties. In other words, psychiatrists, like most docs, are in school for a long time before earning a salary in their respective specialty or subspecialty. So, for anyone considering entering the psychiatry specialty, it’s natural to wonder what the salary might look like before making the leap.
To shed some light on psychiatrist income, we turn to the 2024 Psychiatrist Compensation Report from Medscape, which surveyed more than 7,000 physicians across more than 29 specialties for its annual report. Here's what we learned.
Psychiatrist Annual Salary
Psychiatry is generally considered to be an excellent career path within the medical field. Psychiatrists spend a lot of time working with patients directly, and according to the survey, they tend to find the work rewarding, given the ability to directly impact a patient’s life and observe a clinical improvement in their mental health. Compared to other medical careers, psychiatrists also typically enjoy an excellent quality of life since office hours tend to be regular Monday through Friday shifts with fewer hours spent on call.
That said, according to Medscape, psychiatrists make a lower-than-average physician salary, with the average psychiatrist earning approximately $323,000 last year. But it's a relatively large leap from the $287,000 average they earned in 2022 and the $275,000 that was calculated in 2021 (when the COVID-19 pandemic was still taking a toll on the bottom line for many medical practices).
Psychiatry fell just behind neurology, nephrology, and PM&R in terms of salary—and just above allergy and immunology, rheumatology, and internal medicine.
While psychiatry may not be the top earner among medical careers, it’s also considered one of the least stressful jobs in the medical specialty field. This is primarily due to the number of overall patients, low-stress working environment, and exceptional work-life balance.
More information here:
Financial Advice for ‘Low-Income’ Doctors
Are Psychiatrist Salaries Rising?
Medscape found that the average income among psychiatrists rose approximately 5% from the previous year’s report (after a 4% increase in 2023). However, that spike was somewhat offset by inflation. Psychiatry was also in the middle of physician pay that increased by percentage, trailing far behind PM&R, neurology, and nephrology. But the average for all physicians was a 3% increase, so psychiatrists are still ahead of that.
“Since we came out of COVID,” said Jeff Decker, president of AMN Healthcare's physician solutions division, “physicians have been back in the driver's seat where job offers and negotiations are concerned.”
Do Psychiatrists Have Incentive Bonuses?
This metric wasn't measured in the 2024 Medscape survey, but in 2023, most psychiatrists reported receiving incentive bonuses, earning a median of $37,000 in extra money.
This was actually an increase from the previous year’s report in which psychiatrists made just $24,000 in bonuses. It was also the most significant percentage spike among all physicians surveyed. Still, there are at least seven specialties that make twice as much or more in incentive bonuses than psychiatrists. Again, these numbers are from 2023.
More information here:
How a Psychiatrist Went from a Negative Net Worth in His 30s to Early Retirement
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Do Psychiatrists Feel Fairly Compensated?
Interestingly enough, while psychiatrists ranked 21st out of 29 specialties for overall income, they landed in the third spot for feeling fairly compensated for their work. Approximately 61% of psychiatrists reported feeling fairly compensated—just behind public health and preventative medicine and dermatology.
That number, though, is slightly down from the 65% who were pleased with their income in 2023.
Other Sources
The Medscape survey is not the end-all and be-all of physician salary data. There are other sources out there, and our recommended contract review firms use them to help ensure you are getting paid what you're worth. Other average salary numbers you can find from surveys done about the same time as the Medscape survey include:
- MGMA (2022 number): $306,059
- Resolve: $286,000
- Doximity: $333,000
Increasing Your Psychiatrist Income
If you’ve gotten this far and have concluded that you fall within the 39% of psychiatrists who don’t feel adequately compensated at work, you’ve come to the right place.
You’ll want to start by looking at the terms of your contract and renegotiating your pay and how much you earn. Unfortunately, many doctors are quick to sign contracts that leave them unfairly compensated, with some looking at high costs and non-compete agreements that may restrict their future job opportunities.
When negotiating a new contract, The White Coat Investor has a list of vetted attorneys and law firms who will work with you to ensure you get a good deal.
If you're a psychiatrist, do these numbers track with your experience? Did anything surprise you with these numbers? How could you go about making more money?
is that MGMA compensation from the 2022 data; Also is that the median or mean?
This article is high school level drivel. Please, no.
Not every article is for every reader.
This article seems like it could have been generated by AI. All the specialties could have their own respective articles I guess.
All the specialties do have their own article on the site. You just haven’t seen them because they haven’t run on the blog. Yet. Most of them probably won’t. But these types of articles bring lots of people to the site who don’t yet know anything about it. Search engine traffic is an important method for people finding WCI for the first time. People think they “stumble” in here, but there’s a lot of effort that goes into helping them do that.
Believe me, there was no AI here. Only hours and hours of work, believe it or not. If you do want to see all the specialty salaries we’ve written about, they’re listed in this post. https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/how-much-do-doctors-make/
What isn’t in this article is the variety of psychiatrist work options, and they way they vary in income. While it’s true that there are advantages in lifestyle and the providing of direct patient care, many employed positions can be highly stressful, with high levels of burnout. ED work and short-stay inpatient units are suitable only for a fraction of psychiatrists who are oriented toward that kind of work. Most notably, there is a tremendous need for outpatient office-based services. Psychiatrists who do this work and own their own practices generally significantly exceed the income averages listed. In fact, it should be noted that psychiatry is one of the easiest specialities for owning one’s own practice, as it requires little to no staff or equipment. One can customize hours worked and when those hours are scheduled without too much difficulty. And there is a lot to be said about being one’s own boss. I agree with the general theme that psychiatry is a rewarding and fairly rewarded specialty, provided one chooses a personally suitable practice setting.
Agree with Antares, possibly the largest issue in psychiatry is the lack of acute care psychiatrists as it is a tough job. Hard situation.
TIKTOK SCHOOL OF PSYCHIATRY
I also want to add that the “TikTok School of Psychiatry” has become a serious competitor to our duly trained, adequate, intelligent people trying to help others. They feed into online therapy apps, but even more…. They are often not even midlevels, they are laypeople driving the thoughts and behaviors of our society through their exalted position as “top tiktok psychiatrist”. The level of outrageous behavior, the quack “science” being pushed and accepted by people is horrifying when you consider that the dire enemy of our nation, China, rungs the algorithm. Algorithms are power now. It is no longer “who you know” but “how powerful is the algorithm you run.” China is right in the heart of our nation, controlling the narrative.
China has a direct line into our businesses, our families, our communities, to create havoc, judgement and conflict within our nation without ever even raising a gun. And they are, in a huge way. I cannot believe psychiatrists have not complained more about the “quack psychiatry” that is driving beliefs. This is very dangerous to the specialty of psychiatry, in the long run, as the pushing of any random belief, such as “psychiatrists are very dangerous” can be effectively pushed through these Chinese algorithms. This is why a bipartisan legislative desire to get rid of tiktok is ongoing, but the Chinese already own the hearts and souls of Americans so the push back was too much for them to do the right thing.
Psychiatrists, you might want to peek into this.
I’d be curious to see the earnings list divided by the average number of work hours for each specialty. I would expect psych to move way up and the surgical specialties way down.
You can find average number of work hours within this post. https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/how-much-do-doctors-make/
From my personal observation, psychiatrists are the only specialty which regularly doesn’t take complicated cases and Medicare. Where I live, only one takes Medicare and he has a waiting list.
I am a survivor of abuse by a psychiatrist when I was much younger – conversion therapy. (He went to prison.) As I age, the PTSD gets worse and I am told regularly that my case is “too complicated.” I need a new provider since my is retiring. What other profession in the medical field is able to not take patients because their history is “too complicated?” (That is the term more than one has used.)
Survivors of abuse face unique challenges, those like myself who were abused by the very people who are suppose to help them face more challenges, but the very field that should be helping them, turns their back on them.
Of my group of survivors where I went for conversion therapy, I am the last left; the trail of suicides is in part due to the lack of care they can get.
For whatever it’s worth, I am very sorry to hear that you experienced all of that, Will. Here’s hoping you can find the help that you need.
Sorry to hear of this issue, but too complicated is hardly limited to psychiatrists. Lots of surgeons refer too complicated out. And those of us in more generalist fields routinely refer things beyond our ability to specialists.