Problems of Recruitment Into General Psychiatry

From 1967 to 1970 there occurred a sharp decline in the number of British trainee psychiatrists (1). In 1967 there were 237 British-born or Irish-born registrars training in adult psychiatry in England and Wales; by 1970 this number had fallen to 165. Fortunately, more recent figures show that this downward trend has become arrested: in 1971 the number of British-born and Irish-born registrars was 187. There has not been an absolute reduction in the numbers of junior psychiatric staff because the decline in recruitment of ‘home-born’ psychiatrists has been offset by an influx of doctors from overseas. In 1966, 41 per cent of psychiatric registrars in England and Wales were born overseas; in 1971 this proportion was 62 per cent.