Department of Psychiatry

PSYCHOTHERAPY TRAINING

Psychotherapy training is an integral part of becoming a psychiatrist. Residents begin doing psychotherapy in their first year of training and become competent in three forms of psychotherapy by the end of training. These include supportive psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy and psychodynamic psychotherapy. Residents also have experience with couples, family and group therapy. Our program has wwweloped a step-wise series of expectations in psychotherapy training with goals to be attained each year of residency. Residents are required to write up summaries of their work in therapy for discussion with supervisors and to videotape themselves doing psychotherapy with patients. Videotaping equipment is provided at key clinical sites. Many faculty members, including the residency training director, see psychotherapy patients actively in their practices and have advanced training and/or experience in psychotherapy.

Close relationships with faculty are one of the strengths of our program. All residents are assigned two individual supervisors when they enter the program and meet with them weekly for one hour each. Supervision may focus on a variety of topics. These include general case management, psychotherapy, teaching of special topics and psychopharmacologic management. One of the residents' two supervisors is a psychotherapy supervisor. Detailed process notes, case summaries and videotaped psychotherapy sessions are discussed with this supervisor.