About Our Psychiatry Residency
Our vision for the psychiatry residency involves forging strong Biopsychosocial Psychiatrists. Modern psychiatrists must be both well-versed in psychopharmacology and neurobiology, and psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral therapies.
We want our residents to have robust training in all facets of mental health and be able to seamlessly transition from discussion of attachment to aripiprazole, complex PTSD to cortico-striatal circuits, dopamine to dialectics, empathy to ECT, flooding
to frontal lobes, mentalization to MAT, psychometrics to psychic determinism, risperidone to reaction formation, serotonin to superego, and TMS to theory of mind.
Considering the needs of the community, current training gaps amongst psychiatry residencies, and our unique strengths and service resources, this new residency has three unique focuses beyond standard training:
Psychotherapy
We provide robust experiences with both long-term and brief psychotherapy cases, individual supervision and regular psychotherapy case conferences. Although many psychiatrists do not go on to do formal psychotherapy after residency, we firmly believe
that every patient encounter with a psychiatrist should be therapeutic. We consider the understanding of psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral principles to be essential for assessment, diagnosis and treatment (e.g., medication buy-in and adherence).
It is hard to treat a patient with a personality disorder or substance use problems with medications alone and a lack of understanding of underlying psychopathology. While new pharmacological agents are constantly emerging and necessitate continuing
medical education to prescribe them, psychotherapy skills are timeless and cannot simply be learned from a book or a lecture. Fortunately, we have a strong multidisciplinary team to provide residents with a variety of learning opportunities.
Developmental Disabilities (DD)
There is a huge deficit of training about DD in psychiatry residencies nationwide. Paradoxically, there is a huge need for psychiatrists who are informed and skilled at caring for this unique and often vulnerable population. Working with persons with
DD can be incredibly rewarding. The Center for Human Development, Center for Exceptional Families, and Easterseals were each built on helping children with disabilities and have amazing programs for children and families, including ABA, play therapy,
and medical rehabilitation. Residents will have unique learning opportunities at these sites.
Public & Community Mental Health (CMH)
Many psychiatry programs have little exposure to CMH. However, learning to care for patients with the most serious mental illnesses and understanding social determinants of health is incredibly important for training and our community. Upon graduation,
our residents will be comfortable managing the long-term therapeutic and adverse effects of medications, benzodiazepine tapering in an outpatient setting, medication-assisted treatment for substance use disorders, and assessing/managing suicide and
violence risk outside of a hospital setting. They will be acquainted with the standards of care surrounding Assertive Community Treatment teams, home-based care, housing and employment programs, and in working in multidisciplinary teams of case managers
and therapists. Training longitudinally in a community mental health system like Easterseals, will strengthen their treatment armamentarium, and their knowledge about medicolegal/regulatory matters, available resources, funding and public mental health.