New Psychiatry Residency Program at Carolinas HealthCare System

Nearly 43 million adults in the United States have a mental health condition. Of those, approximately 60% do not receive care [1]. Even those who are treated frequently receive fragmented care. As a result, mental health disorders cost the United States more than $450 billion annually [2]. Moreover, underdiagnosis, undertreatment, and lack of access to services contribute to approximately 40,000 suicides annually [3]. North Carolina has an inadequate distribution of psychiatrists, as well as an insufficient number of mental health and substance abuse professionals [4, 5]. Between 1999 and 2004, two-thirds of North Carolina's counties experienced a decline in availability of psychiatrists. Unfortunately, the overall supply of psychiatrists per 10,000 population has not changed significantly over the past decade. Recent data indicate that 27 counties across North Carolina did not have a practicing psychiatrist in 2012, and 18 counties had only 1 practicing psychiatrist [6]. Due to the state's rapid population growth, the situation may worsen unless action is taken to increase the supply of psychiatrists. Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS) offers comprehensive treatment programs that make it one of the region's most noteworthy behavioral health providers. Nonetheless, CHS continues to face significant challenges in recruiting qualified psychiatrists, and this issue led to a delay in opening the 3rd unit of the CHS Mindy Ellen Levine Behavioral Health Center in Davidson. This challenge focused CHS on the need to train our own providers, and we successfully appealed to the Leon Levine Foundation for support in launching a residency program in psychiatry.