There’s a lot to what makes a physician job a good one, particularly in today’s healthcare environment. That said, for most psychiatrists, salary remains an important factor in determining whether a job is a good fit. We are big believers that knowing your worth and asking for it is key to career longevity. Having access to salary data allows this, as salary transparency about what the average psychiatrist salary is (and information about other typical parts of the compensation package) is essential to leverage during your contract negotiations for a new job.
On our physician communities, we’ve seen so many physicians express that they’ve been undervalued in the marketplace, and have therefore tried to provide both concrete data points as well as compile aggregate physician salary data on what doctors make, and making it available to our members for free, as opposed to having to pay for expensive databases.
Reported averages on physician salaries depend on several factors. Given the wide range of compensation across specialties, specialty is one of the largest factors in answering the question of how much doctors make. We’ve started this series on compensation data by specialty to assess aggregate data from our physician salary data provided by physicians across the country.
Other factors such as hours worked, location, and practice environment all factor into psychiatrist salary and compensation packages as well, so we look at differences in some of these categories within the specialty as well. Unless otherwise noted, the data included in our analysis below on what psychiatrists make was collected from mid-2023 through mid-2024.
Disclaimers/Disclosures: This information is derived from our physician salary and compensation databases, but is subject to self-reporting errors and availability of relevant data points from our online communities. This information is provided for educational purposes only, and is aimed at advocating for individual physicians. It is not intended to be used for collective bargaining; please see additional disclosures and disclaimers on the physician salary data pages. Please also do your own research before making any decisions based on the information provided. We are not formal financial, legal, or tax professionals and do not provide individualized advice. You should consult these as appropriate. We highly recommend having your physician employment agreement reviewed by a physician contract review attorney to ensure you have the most up to date and relevant information for your specific situation.
Article Navigation
Average Psychiatrist Salary in 2024
The average annual salary across all of our contributing psychiatrists was $312,000, including physicians practicing psychiatry part time and full time. This data excludes residents and fellows.
A single average annual salary can be misleading, as several factors affect salary. We break this number down further to help you find more relevant comparison points.
Average Full-Time Psychiatrist Salary for 2024
Part-time salaries can skew the overall average, so let’s look at full-time versus part-time separately.
For a full-time equivalent, we assumed an average number of hours worked a week of 36 hours or more. We omitted any data points that did not specify their average.
The average salary for a full-time psychiatrist was $325,000. To give you an idea on the range of the salary around the average, a few extra stats:
The lowest full-time salaries were around $200,000.
The highest full-time salaries were around $700,00-$800,000.
The median full-time salary was $302,000.
Average Part-Time Psychiatrist Salary for 2024
Several of our physician members reported working part-time.
To assess a part-time average, we looked at attending physicians who reported working 16-35 hours a week.
The average part-time psychiatrist salary was $284,000.
We don’t have enough data points to break this down further, so please consider contributing if you haven’t already for future updates to this page. Find links to contribute on our physician salary and compensation data page.
How Much Psychiatrists Make by Specialization
Our psychiatry members could include a sub-specialty when contributing to our databases. Since specialization can pay heavily into salary, let’s look at the average salary breakdown by these specialization categories. These numbers are for doctors that reported working 36+ hours per week or more.
General psychiatry: $327,000
Child and adolescent psychiatry: $337,000
Outside of any other factors we look into below, child and adolescent psychiatrists reported about a 3% higher average salary than general psychiatrists. We don’t have enough data about other subspecialties within psychiatry at the moment to determine how large of a factor sub-specialization within psychiatry is in determining salary.
The following subspecialties or categories did not have enough data points to populate aggregate data for:
Addiction psychiatry
Consult liaison
Eating disorders
Forensic psychiatry
If you’re in these subspecialties or categories, please consider contributing to the physician salary and compensation data so that we can add them in future updates.
Psychiatrist Salary by Gender
We looked at reported salaries for full-time psychiatrists and compared what our female physicians averaged compared to their male counterparts, excluding all other factors (such as specialization, location, etc.).
Female psychiatrists doctors reported an average salary of $313,000. Male psychiatrists reported an average salary of $344,000.
Our male doctors averaged a 10% higher salary than our female doctors.
Psychiatrist Salary by Practice Environment
Looking at full-time (36+ hours a week average) attending psychiatrists, we broke the data down by where our members reported working to assess the average pay differences by practice environment.
Corporate group, non private equity - not enough data points to assess
Corporate group, private equity - not enough data
FQHC and other non-profits - $307,000
Government - $309,000
Group private practice, non private equity backed - not enough data
Group private practice, private equity backed - not enough data
Academic hospital employee - $270,000
Non-academic hospital employee - $329,000
Solo private practice - not enough data
Looking at data just by practice environment, psychiatrists working for academic hospitals reported the lowest salaries. These positions often qualify for Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which can be a significant benefit in the overall compensation package, though normally so do nonprofits and government positions.
Our non-academic hospital psychiatrists made an average 21% more than their academic counterparts, outside of other factors and compensation components.
Though we didn’t have enough data points to assess an average, our locums psychiatrists reported some of the highest overall salaries. We have a separate locums pay and compensation data set, and have looked at the statistics on locum tenens compensation for doctors separately, where there is much more data about this. As a reminder, in contrast to academic hospitals, locums doctors often have higher salaries but little to no benefits, and have to pay self-employed taxes, which is one of the reasons we say to consider not just the salary but the entire proposed offer.
Psychiatrist Salary by Type of Employment
The overwhelming majority of our psychiatry members are W2 employees. If you fall into the following categories and wish to see how salary data changes depending on type of employment, please consider contributing to our physician salary and compensation data today:
1099
Locums/per diem
Partner/owner
How Much Psychiatrists Make by Location
To look at how much psychiatrists make based on where they live, we want a minimum of 10 data points per state and at least five different states to compare. To help us expand our analysis into this section, please contribute your physician salary and compensation data today.
Psychiatrist Salary by Hours Worked
Medicine can often be an “eat what you kill” industry, so we wanted to look at how average salaries varied by average hours worked. Some of our members reported working 61+ hours a week, but the vast majority fell into the following ranges.
36-40 hours a week average - $333,000 a year
41-45 hours a week average - $296,000 a year
46-50 hours a week average - $287,000 a year
51-60 hours a week average - $398,000 a year
We usually see a trend where income increases slightly with hours worked. Increasingly, we don’t see a coherent trend with our current data set, which suggests that other factors, like practice environment, can actually outweigh salary by hours worked up to a certain point. The vast majority of our FQHC and other nonprofit employees fell into the 36-40 hours a week average, while other practice environments were scattered throughout the average work week lengths.
As an aside, we know that many psychiatrists spend a lot of time at home charting. You may have heard us talking about AI scribes on the physician communities. They are becoming more and more widespread, and can dramatically decrease the amount of time you spend charting.
We have a free trial and a long standing discount on an AI scribing solution in our practice resources for physicians, in case you need one!
Changes in Average Psychiatrist Physician Salary Over Time
As noted above, the data analyzed included contributions from mid 2023 to mid 2024, reflecting data from our most recent salary and compensation database.
We also dug into our previous salary database we started in 2018 to get an idea of the trends in average pay for psychiatrists over time. To compare relative data, we continued to look only at psychiatry doctors out of residency/fellowship who worked on average 36+ hours a week. For 2023, we combined the data from the old data and the new database, cutting off entries at the transition point to help omit any overlapping or duplicate information.
2018-2019: $247,000
2020-2021: $268,000 (9% increase)
2022-2023: $316,000 (18% increase)
With our average salary for psychiatrists of $325,000 from our new database covering mid 2023 to mid 2024, we can see salaries continuing to increase for 2024. We hope with continued salary transparency, this trend will continue.
Additional Insights into Psychiatrist Compensation Packages
In addition to salary information, physicians contributing to our databases include other compensation data as well. We plan to dive further into complete compensation packages later, but for now, we have included some key insights psychiatrists might find interesting.
Sign-On and Relocation Bonuses Psychiatrists Receive
35% of our psychiatrists reported receiving a sign-on bonus, with the average amount of $20,000.
Learn more about signing bonuses for physicians.
Around 15% reported receiving a relocation bonus. The average amount was around $10,000.
Average Vacation Days Psychiatrists Receive
The average number and median number of vacation days annually was around 25 days. Some doctors commented that their vacation is an overall pool of paid time off, including holidays, sick time, and CME, while others had separate buckets.
CME Stipends for Psychiatrists
Around 65% of our full-time psychiatry doctors reported receiving some sort of CME stipend, with the average annual stipend being around $2,500.
Average Student Loan Debt for Psychiatry
While student loans are not a part of compensation, student loan debt forgiveness can be a benefit with many positions. Of our physicians who reported their student loan debt at graduation, the average debt was $250,000. The higher your federal loan debt burden, the more beneficial repayment programs and loan forgiveness programs can be.
Learn more about doctor student loans. If you’ve been considering refinancing to help with the debt burden, you can also explore our student loan refinancing options.
Extra Insights from Psychiatrists
As part of our salary and compensation data contributions, members of our physician online community can provide additional comments. As we compiled the data, we also looked for additional insights provided by other psychiatrists that could be valuable for job selection and contract negotiations. A few that might be of use:
Increasing Your Psychiatrist Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income as a psychiatrist. But a reminder first: look at the overall picture, taking into consideration all the factors included above and others, such as other compensation in the overall employment package such as amount of PTO, call responsibilities, 401(k) match, etc.
Salary is a key component to physician compensation, but it isn’t the only part of a well negotiated physician employment contract.
If you like where you work but don’t love the pay, consider setting aside a time to talk with management. If you are a valued part of their team, they may be willing to work with you to renegotiate your contract versus risking you leaving. Their answer may be no, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Be practical in what you’re expecting and respectful in your request. Diving deeper into the salary and compensation data for physicians for comparable situations can help you get a target idea of what to try to renegotiate for.
Looking for additional career opportunities can also help. Sometimes, an employer may either not be able to or just not willing to work with you to get you to where you should be. That doesn’t mean every job will come with the same constraints. Interviewing for a few other positions can give you a feel of what the market looks like from the employer’s perspective by what employers are willing to offer. Explore open opportunities on our Physician Side Gigs job board, and explore all our physician career resources and education to help you navigate the job search process.
While we think the data above and in our database can be a great tool during the negotiation process, we almost always also recommend hiring a local contract review attorney for physicians to review your contract. They will have invaluable experience when it comes to negotiating physician contracts, including understanding what red flags to watch out for.
If the side gigs insights above intrigued you, or you’re looking to increase your income as an psychiatrist but are already at or above your market’s rate, opportunities to consider include:
Forensic consulting
Reviewing insurance claims
Explore side gigs for psychiatrists or all our side gig ideas for physicians for more options.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Psychiatrists
Explore our related articles and resources on doctor compensation and salaries:
If you haven’t recently, please take a few minutes to contribute! The data provided is used only for the purpose of our database to help physicians like yourself negotiate better compensation by helping provide salary transparency with relevant data. The data is completely anonymous and is only available to members of our Physician Side Gigs Facebook group. Contribution links can be found on our compensation data for physicians page.
Looking for a new career opportunity? Explore the Physician Side Gigs job board for current opportunities.
If you need guidance on negotiating your next contract for the best possible deal, check out: