In life there will always be things that bother us. For me one of my biggest pet peeves came when all of a sudden I went from being a Psychiatrist to becoming a “behavioral health” provider. I personally can’t stand it. I feel like it lessens my training as a Psychiatrist. I am a Psychiatrist not a behavioral health specialist. I think what bothers me more is that we didn’t fight the name change of the field. Did surgeons become cutting specialists??? I think I detest it so much because I know how hard I worked to become a psychiatrist. Now to call me “a behavioral health specialist” takes away from the field of Psychiatry. There is no such thing as a “behavioral health” residency. Psychiatrists as a group should have said,”no” when it was implemented by hospital administrators. I don’t know what drove the decision to change the name of the department. I see it more in hospitals that don’t have Psychiatry residencies. I think because all hospitals are required to meet every patient’s mental health needs they came up with a way to offer mental health services that was less stigmatized which gets me onto another topic for another day as to why we still make it a “bad thing” to seek out mental heath care.
