Psychiatrist Salary in Ohio 2026,
$244,990 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $244,990 a year, or $117.78 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 13.1% below the national median of $281,870. The band runs $82,650 at the 10th percentile to $423,440 at the 90th, with the middle half between $171,140 and $311,190. Ohio's low state income tax rate recovers part of that gap in take-home terms.

Akron at $289,420, then Cleveland $271,790, Cincinnati $261,710, Toledo $233,210 and Columbus $220,940. About sixty-eight thousand dollars separates top from bottom — a wide spread that reflects each market's balance of publicly funded, academic and commercial psychiatric employment rather than any cost-of-living difference.

Because a large share of Ohio psychiatry is delivered through publicly funded systems. The state operates its own regional psychiatric hospitals and funds community behavioural health through county alcohol, drug addiction and mental health boards, and those services are constrained by their appropriations in what they can offer. Add academic employment at the state's medical centres and a location quotient of 0.69, and the published median of $244,990 reflects that funding structure rather than the value of psychiatric work.

In the rural and Appalachian counties, which contain significant designated mental health professional shortage areas and where county behavioural health boards and community providers compete for a very small pool. The metro table cannot show this directly, but a location quotient of 0.69 and about 20 openings a year pro-rated from the national total indicate a specialty that is thin everywhere in Ohio and thinnest where the population is most dispersed. Telepsychiatry has become a substantial part of how those counties are covered.

The state rate is 2.75% on the basis used here — low by national standards, and worth a meaningful amount at a $244,990 median compared with high-rate progressive states. But Ohio adds layers: hundreds of municipalities levy income tax on wages earned within their boundaries, and school districts may levy their own on residents. A psychiatrist working at a hospital in one city and living in a taxing school district elsewhere will encounter both, and private practice income is generally subject to municipal net-profit tax where the practice operates.

More than in most specialties, because so much psychiatric care here is commissioned rather than sold. Ohio operates regional psychiatric hospitals directly and funds community behavioural health through county alcohol, drug addiction and mental health boards that contract with local providers. Those providers are paid from appropriations and Medicaid rather than from commercial insurance, and their salary structures follow. A psychiatrist in that system is doing essential, high-acuity work at rates the funding permits; one in private or hospital-employed commercial practice is not constrained the same way. The sixty-eight-thousand-dollar spread between Akron at $289,420 and Columbus at $220,940 is largely a difference in that mix.

The band is too wide to summarise in one number. With $171,140 at the 25th percentile and $311,190 at the 75th, the median describes a boundary between publicly funded and part-time practice on one side and commercial and inpatient practice on the other. Psychiatry also has an unusually high share of part-time and flexible working, which stretches the lower half further. The wage measure excludes private practice profit, locum arrangements and telepsychiatry contract income, all common in this specialty. And with about 690 psychiatrists counted, the metro rows rest on small samples.

Employment sector first — moving from publicly funded community psychiatry into hospital-employed or private practice is most of the distance from the $171,140 quarter-point to the $311,190 seventy-fifth percentile. Setting second, with inpatient and crisis psychiatry paying above routine outpatient work. Subspecialty third: child and adolescent psychiatry and addiction medicine are the scarcest in this state and the most in demand. And private practice fourth, reaching the $423,440 ninetieth percentile, subject to municipal net-profit tax where the practice operates.