BEAUMONT, Texas — Officials with Baptist Hospital in Beaumont are hoping to provide more than just care to the children in their psychiatrists services.
They hope to do this by starting a new teaching institute or fellowship program to produce future providers and to shape the future of child psychiatry.
This is all in the hope of combating the shortage of child psychiatrists in Southeast Texas.
"From downtown Houston to downtown Beaumont it's about 110 miles. In this 110 miles radius I don't find any child psychiatry program," said Dr. Raheel Memon, the director of psychiatric services at Baptist Hospital.
Dr. Memon was hired in February 2024 to spearhead a new fellowship program in Beaumont.
"Learning has been my core since the beginning and I wanted to be apart of the faculty and help nurture the upcoming psychiatrists," he said.
He says they're hoping to get two or three trainees to work with children suffering from anxiety, autism and ADHD during the two-year program.
"I had noticed that mental illness goes down to the childhood somehow whether it's a traumatic childhood, whether it's a broken family," Dr. Memon said. "When there are people that are being trained they have questions, concerns, objections. We hope our general psychiatrist residents will step up and become apart of our fellowship program."
Dr. Memon says as the sole child psychiatrist in the hospital's entire system, he could be treating around 30 patients at one time and needs help.
"We don't have enough child psychiatrists or psychiatrists who can fulfill the need," he said.
His hope is that this program will help bridge the gap between helping children suffering with mental illness and the shortage of child psychiatrists in our area.
"I'm hopeful that our future child trainees will stay in this area and will continue providing services both inpatient and outpatient care," Dr. Memon told 12News.
The hospital system is now working to get the green light from the federal nonprofit ACGME to launch the fellowship program.
According to Dr. Memon in order to work with children, trainees must complete 36 months of a general psychiatry residency.