The chairman of an academic psychiatry department describes the tensions that have commonly existed between department chairs and the child and adolescent psychiatry programs they administer. In his view, child and adolescent psychiatry programs have tended to adopt an attitude of entitlement and competitiveness that complicates the departmental efforts to work together to recruit child and adolescent psychiatrists. Nevertheless, he says, recruitment of child and adolescent psychiatrists must be a priority of academic psychiatry departments. He describes several strategies that department chairmen may use, in cooperation with child and adolescent psychiatry programs and national organizations, to pursue that goal.Abstract Teaser