Psychiatrist Salary in Texas 2026,
$228,460 Median | BLS Data by City

Texas psychiatrists earn a median $228,460 a year, $109.84 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a 75th percentile of $305,530 and a 90th of $391,890. The lower percentiles — $73,330 and $104,290 — reflect part-time, academic and community mental health appointments rather than full-time practice, so read the median upward for an established clinician.

Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands at $249,070, then Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington at $240,930, Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos at $236,340, San Antonio-New Braunfels at $188,090 and Tyler at $66,550. The Tyler figure is an artefact of a very small sample dominated by part-time and institutional appointments and should not be read as an East Texas market rate.

No. The Texas Medical Board issues a single physician licence and there is no psychiatry-specific state credential; board certification comes from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Texas has not joined the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, so relocating psychiatrists apply directly. Controlled-substance prescribing requires DEA registration and use of the Texas Prescription Monitoring Program.

No. Texas has no personal income tax and no local income tax, so a psychiatrist at the median of $228,460 or the 75th percentile of $305,530 owes nothing to the state on salary or practice income. In a specialty with a large cash-pay private outpatient segment, that applies to the practice earnings too.

The location quotient of 0.67 across about 1,690 psychiatrists reflects a genuine and long-standing shortage: Texas has a limited number of psychiatry residency positions relative to its population, large rural areas federally designated as mental health professional shortage areas, and competition from states with more established academic psychiatry infrastructure. The practical consequence for a psychiatrist practising here is high demand, ready caseload and considerable leverage in negotiating terms — none of which is captured by the published median.

It is substantial. The Texas sample is small — about 1,690 psychiatrists — and the occupation pools full-time clinical practice with part-time, academic, correctional and community mental health appointments that annualise far lower. That produces a $73,330 tenth percentile and a $104,290 twenty-fifth that are not full-time market rates for a board-certified psychiatrist in Texas. The Tyler metro figure of $66,550 is the same phenomenon in miniature. Read the $228,460 median and the $305,530 seventy-fifth percentile as the practising range.

Because Texas's psychiatric employment is unusually weighted toward public-sector and institutional settings — state hospitals, correctional psychiatry, community mental health centres and academic departments — which pay on fixed scales, while much of the state's private psychiatric care is delivered on a cash-pay basis that a wage survey captures incompletely. The scarcity is real; it is being expressed as unmet demand and as private-practice income rather than as a higher measured wage.

Telepsychiatry, call and practice model. Texas's geography makes telepsychiatry unusually important — the Texas Medical Board requires Texas licensure to treat a patient located in Texas regardless of where the psychiatrist sits, so licensure is the gate on a large remote market. Inpatient and emergency psychiatric call carries premiums; child and adolescent, addiction and forensic subspecialties are the scarcest and best paid. And cash-pay outpatient practice, which is how many Texas psychiatrists reach the $305,530 seventy-fifth percentile and the $391,890 ninetieth, is untaxed by the state.