Child and Adolescent Psychiatry for the Future: Challenges and Opportunities

In this article, the authors focus on three particularly salient sets of issues that face the field of child and adolescent psychiatry as a sub-specialty of general psychiatry today—those related to workforce, public perception, and professional identity. In an article directed at the general psychiatrist, the authors present possibilities for refocusing the activities of the child and adolescent psychiatrist to emphasize consultative and collaborative roles. The authors embrace working in systems of care with communities and families as partners. Finally, they discuss the training implications of such shifts in professional identity, and the need to maintain the centrality of a scientifically-based developmental biopsychosocial formulation.