Challenges in child and adolescent psychiatric education.

An estimated 1 in 5 children (22%), which is about 20 million young people, have severe psychiatric disorders and are in need of expert evaluation and treatment (1). At this time, there are only 7,000 child and adolescent psychiatrists. Beyond the clinical needs that child and adolescent psychiatrists must address, child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP) training directors are under tremendous pressure to train other allied health professionals, largely pediatricians and general psychiatrists, to meet this need. Additional increasing demands on training programs from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), combined with the tremendous social demands, have resulted in a crisis in CAP training and the service needs of its graduates. This issue of Academic Psychiatry addresses these topics in the spirit of looking forward to the challenges of a new era in residency training and the transition to an uncharted system of care. In this editorial, we outline the forces within and outside residency education that are shaping the future of our training programs and how authors in this issue contribute to meeting the challenges ahead to better care for patients.