Furore over plans to merge training of child psychiatrists and youth psychiatrists

Professionals defend separation of two fields

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Health care experts have lashed out at plans for changes in the training of psychiatrists, which they feel could threaten the quantity and quality of youth psychiatric services.
      Under a proposal currently under consideration, the training programmes for child psychiatry and youth psychiatry are to be merged.
      Professionals in the field say that such a move would lead to a disintegration of mental health services for young people. There are also warnings of a deterioration of skills in youth psychiatric research and treatment.
     
Eight leading specialists in child psychiatry and youth psychiatry, including professors Terttu Arajärvi and Vappu Taipale, have issued an appeal on the matter in Lääkärilehti, the journal of the Finnish Medical Association.
      The signatories denounce the proposals for a merger of training to be a “strange project” at a time of increasing problems facing youth, including a rising need for child foster care, youth unemployment, violence, and unprecedented mass killings.
      The number of patients seen by youth psychiatrists doubled between 2002 and 2009.
     
The Finish Psychiatric Association says that mental health problems facing young people in Finland are seriously undertreated. Between 20 and 25 per cent of young Finns are believed to have at least one mental health issue, but only 20-40 per cent of young people suffering from those problems have received help.
      The reason given for the merger of the training programmes is that the demarcation between child and youth psychiatry is blurred, and that treatment in both fields usually involves cooperation among different professionals.
      Many doctors have specialised in both child and youth psychiatry. The aim of the changes is to save in education costs and not to affect the number of students in the field.
     
Centre Party MP Aila Paloniemi, the chair of the support group for youth mental health in Parliament, is shocked by the planned changes.
      She says that young people in danger of being marginalised need their own specialised services, and now those services are being put in jeopardy. Paloniemi is also afraid that doctors might not want to specialise in a field in which they are expected to care for patients with an age range of zero to 22.
      However, Pekka Sauri, the chairman of the Finnish Central Association for Mental Health, sees potential benefit in the merger of two sectors of psychiatry, in which there is already a degree of overlap. He does not understand the arguments that the quality of treatment would deteriorate if the fields were merged.
     
A draft proposal for a government decision on degrees for specialist doctors is currently under consideration, with different interested parties giving statements on the matter according to a proposal by a working group set up by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.
      Minister of Education Jukka Gustafsson (SDP) says that he has studied the matter thoroughly.
      “I have put the proposal in its original form forward for comments, but psychologically I am leaning toward the idea that it is appropriate to keep child and youth psychiatry separate from each other.”
      “Teaching, research and training in youth psychiatry are especially valuable, and there is a danger that we would lose something special if a field of specialised science were to be eliminated”, Gustafsson says.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Ministry to plug loophole in treatment guarantee for child psychiatry (31.10.2008)

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