Concentrations
Concentrations are career enrichment pathways within the residency that provide mentorship as well as additional academic and clinical experiences for residents interested in developing as leaders in specific areas of interest. Completion of concentration requirements will result in a special designation at residency graduation. Our program currently offers 5 concentrations: the Community and Global Psychiatry Concentration, the Clinician-Educator Concentration, the Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Concentration, the Neuromodulation Concentration, and the Women’s Mental Health Concentration.
Community Psychiatry and Global Mental Health
Clinician-Educator
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Neuromodulation
Women's Mental Health
Community Psychiatry and Global Mental Health
Community Psychiatry and Global Mental Health Concentration
- For more information, please visit our website: https://www.uclacgp.com/residency-information-cgp
- Graduates with these concentrations have gone on to be leaders in public service, in both academic and community settings
- Clinical electives in community psychiatry and global mental health
- Mentorship by Community Psychiatry and Global Mental Health faculty
- Opportunity to complete a research, policy, or other scholarly project with the guidance of expert faculty
- Specialized educational experiences
- Social Determinants Case Conferences: clinical case presentation and discussion focusing on the intersections between illness presentation, clinical care, and the social and structural determinants of mental health
- Experiential site visits: jail mental health, permanent supportive housing sites
- Policy and Change Events: pairing of health services/policy research journal club with direct advocacy on timely issues, moderated by faculty and advocacy leaders
- Community/Global Psychiatry lunch talks, journal clubs, resident-faculty networking and career development events
Clinician-Educator
Clinician-Educator Concentration
- The Clinician-Educator Concentration aims to provide interested residents with formal training in medical education through a structured curriculum on educational principles and the opportunity to work on a scholarly project.
- Residents accepted into the concentration will have the opportunity to attend didactics focused on educational principles during the first few months of PGY-3, participate in monthly concentration meetings (including Teaching Labs which are opportunities to try out new educational strategies while getting direct and immediate feedback on your teaching), design and complete a scholarly project that meets an identified educational need (such as developing a new curriculum, improving an existing didactic series, creation of an online lecture series, or publication of a book or other educational aid), give a capstone Grand Rounds presentation on a topic of their choosing, and engage in educational activities in the medical school and residency.
- Residents in the concentration will also have the opportunity to be paired with a clinician-educator faculty member for regular mentorship and career guidance.
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Concentration
- Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (PDP) concentration offers interested residents an immersion in psychodynamic psychotherapy training. Through this program participants will develop greater competence in the practice of PDP and a deeper knowledge of psychodynamic theory, building on the psychodynamic psychotherapy training already offered in the adult residency.
- PDP encompasses a variety of approaches, all rooted in a psychoanalytic understanding of mental functioning, human development and psychopathology. This track draws on contemporary and empirically established psychodynamic models to give participants the most validated approach to PDP. In addition, the training draws on common-factors research to teach skills known to account for most of the variance in outcome across all bona fide forms of psychotherapy. In this way, the program engages actively with the broader field of psychotherapy and seeks to foster a critical and open-minded attitude toward PDP relative to other modalities. As is known, the horse race between different brands of psychotherapy is over; all bona fide forms of psychotherapy are just about equally effective across a broad range of diagnoses. The questions for the field are now more specific: understanding how particular interventions and techniques work, which interventions yield the greatest benefits, and tailoring treatment choice to the individual patient.
- As a skills focused program, the PDP concentration will utilize active coaching and feedback and supervision best practices. Efficiency of skill acquisition will be enhanced through the use of a deliberate practice learning framework and an apprenticeship model of experiential learning. The didactic program, especially the teaching of theory, is designed to directly serve the teaching of technique and a pragmatic approach. The use of session video is a fundamental requirement as it is used in multiple aspects of the training.
- As taught, the psychodynamic model will emphasize developmental attachment experiences, attachment style, the therapy relationship, affective experience within the session, mentalizing and reflective function and working with defenses. The model will be linked to neurobiology through the study of affective and relational neuroscience.
- By and large, psychodynamic psychotherapy is now–and in the future will be–carried out at a frequency of once per week, with relatively short courses of treatment (less than 6 months to a few years) compared to psychoanalyses of the past. Therefore, the program is focused on technique designed for this setting, in contrast to the view of psychodynamic psychotherapy as a derivative form of psychoanalysis. In particular, attention will be paid to skills known to enhance outcome. These include cultivating positive expectancy through psychoeducation and conveyance of hope, establishing goal and task consensus, actively managing the alliance and cultivating therapist characteristics of openness, genuineness, warmth, transparency, empathy and reflective capacity.
- The program aspires to include a research component that tracks data and assesses various aspects of the training or clinical care within the clinic. This will provide participants with an opportunity to fulfill a required scholarly project.
- Finally, the program seeks to cultivate future leaders in the practice of psychotherapy by psychiatrists by requiring participants to engage in some teaching and/or supervision of PDP, attend workshops or meetings, and network with and seek mentorship from psychiatrists who practice PDP.
Neuromodulation
Neuromodulation Concentration
- The relatively new subspecialty coined “neuromodulation” encompasses numerous novel treatments for patients who have not received therapeutic benefit from longer-established modalities. Included, but not limited, under this umbrella term are transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), deep brain stimulation (DBS), electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), magnetic seizure therapy (MST), ketamine, MDMA, and transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS).
- UCLA’s neuromodulation division is already at the frontier of generating new knowledge about interventional strategies and delivering clinical care. The division currently hosts a biweekly seminar series surveying work from local and international researchers. The TMS Clinical and Research Service receives 5-10 new referrals a week and delivers more than 6,000 individual treatment sessions a year. The service has expanded to open an outpatient clinic in Pasadena as well as an inpatient research program, offering interested residents numerous clinical and research training opportunities. Students would have the opportunity to follow individual patients from initial assessment, through their 6-week treatment course and subsequent taper, while learning about strategies to optimize treatment response. UCLA’s neurosurgical team implants approximately 1-2 deep brain stimulators a week, offering interested residents ample opportunities to observe this cutting-edge procedure. The ECT clinic at UCLA delivers approximately 50 treatments per week. They have dedicated nursing and anesthesia staff who have identified as interested specifically in treating patients with ECT. Their service has served as a model for other major academic programs across the nation.
- Recent advances in neuroscience have improved our understanding of psychiatric illness and the correlates in underlying neurocircuitry. Significant research funding has gone towards understanding the neural substrates involved in brain function and psychiatric illness. Consequently, treatments are focusing more on aberrant circuitry as therapeutic targets have been identified. With this paradigm shift, psychiatry has acknowledged the need for specialists, as evidenced by the creation of new departments, fellowships, and treatment centers for neuromodulation. However, psychiatry training programs are only beginning to recognize the need for formalized exposure required to practice as a psychiatrist specialized in neuromodulation.
- To address this need, a Neuromodulation Concentration has been established to offer residents more formal training in this nascent subspecialty. The hope is that interested residents will have a greater opportunity to receive specialized training in many treatment modalities that are changing the way psychiatry is practiced.
- The concentration will provide supplementary academic and clinical experiences for residents hoping to develop as leaders in the field of neuromodulation. Residents at any stage of their training can request to be paired with a faculty mentor. However, residents should formally enroll in the concentration in their R2 year. A scholarly project proposal should be submitted by the middle of R3 year. The project must be completed before the end of residency. Completion of the concentration requirements will result in granting a special designation on the residency graduation diploma.
Women's Mental Health
Women’s Mental Health Concentration
- This concentration provides interested residents with formal training in women’s mental health, reproductive psychiatry, and trauma-informed care with the goal of enhancing professional development and developing clinician leaders.
- The concentration also aims to develop psychiatrists who advocate for an intersectional, anti-racist, equity-focused approach to women’s mental health care.
- Residents enrolled in the concentration will have the opportunity to participate in a minimum of two required UCLA women’s mental health clinics, complete a scholarly project focused on women’s mental health or clinical education, participate in didactic lectures, engage in teaching medical students and residents, and networking opportunities.
- Clinical sites include the UCLA Women’s Life Clinic (required), VA Women’s Mental Health Clinic (required), Maternal Mental Health PHP/IOP, and the UCLA MOMS Clinic. Interested residents are welcome to participate in additional clinics as approved by the faculty leads.
- Residents in the concentration will be paired with a women’s mental health faculty member for ongoing mentorship and career guidance.
- Completion of the Women’s Mental Health Concentration requirements will result in special recognition and granting of a certificate at graduation.