PGY 2 Year
Intro to Public Psychiatry – Community Care for Severe Mental Illness
Dr Stephanie LeMelle, 7 weeks
These are the first in a series of lectures that will be given by leaders in the field of Public Psychiatry and will cover topics related to the care of people with severe mental illness in community settings. Lectures will include pertinent case presentations and leading articles in the field. Topics to be covered include housing, benefits, vocational rehabilitation, Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT), family therapy and recovery issues.
The Initial Psychiatric Interview
Drs. Janis Cutler, Michael First, Steven Hyler and Kelli Harding, 7 weeks
This course is a didactic and clinical experience in interviewing. Initial interviews with patients are done in class or on videotape by both residents and course instructors. The aim is to learn techniques that are helpful in arriving at an initial assessment that includes, but is not limited to, a psychiatric diagnosis. Faculty members demonstrate their own individual differences in interviewing, and residents are encouraged to integrate their individual style with the techniques taught.
The Mental Status Exam
Dr. David Strauss, 2 weeks
This is an introductory course on the fundamentals of the psychiatric evaluation and mental status exam. It teaches residents how to take a history, describe and write-up patients using standard format and nomenclature.
Introduction to Psychotherapy
Dr. Deborah Cabaniss, with Drs. Anna Schwartz, Carolyn Douglas, Michael Devlin, John Markowitz, Barbara Stanley, and Milton Wainberg, 7 months
This course introduces residents to basic principles of psychotherapy, such as learning to listen, assessment for psychotherapy, and beginning the treatment. Different models of the mind are introduced, as are the major psychotherapies. The course is co-taught by diverse members of the psychotherapy faculty.
Introduction to Teaching Medical Students
Dr. Janis Cutler, 1 week
Provides residents with an introduction to teaching medical students psychiatry while rotating through the inpatient units.
Schizophrenia and Related Disorders
Dr. Tom Smith, 6 weeks
Dimensions of schizophrenia are reviewed in this course: symptomatology, diagnosis, prognosis and the subjective experience, as well as the history and development of psychotic disorder classification. In addition, epidemiological and etiological studies, forensic and family studies, and the various treatment approaches are discussed. Particular attention is paid to current biological theories of both disease process and treatment.
Affective Disorders
Drs. Elizabeth Sublette and Jeffrey Miller, 6 weeks
This course covers the phenomenology, epidemiology and psychobiology of affective disorders. Treatment is reviewed from both psychotherapeutic and pharmacological perspectives. Theoretical and practical material is carefully integrated.
Anxiety Disorders
Dr. Blair Simpson, 6 weeks
This course covers the phenomenology, epidemiology and psychobiology of the anxiety disorders. Treatment approaches including psychopharmacology and psychotherapy are discussed.
Eating Disorders
Dr. Timothy Walsh, 2 weeks
This course covers the phenomenology, epidemiology, neurobiology and treatment of eating disorders.
Psychopharmacology
Dr. David Kahn, 5 months
This is an introductory course designed to teach residents the practical basis of psychopharmacology. Each class of psychotropic agent is discussed with particular emphasis on choice of drugs, dosages and side effect management. Care is taken to integrate the discussion of pharmacological treatments with didactics from each of the disorder-focused courses.
Psychopharmacology Case Conference
Dr. Joshua Gordon, 5 weeks
This course utilizes case discussions to indentify and discuss important issues in psychopharmacology and neurobiology of psychiatric diseases. The emphasis is on understanding the patient material from the neuroscience perspective.
Child Development
Dr. Daniel Chrzanowski, 3 months
Normative child development is the focus of this three month course. Physical and neurological growth, attachment, cognition, language acquisition and psychosocial maturation are discussed in the context of current and historical theories.
Substance Abuse
Dr. Frances Levin, 6 weeks
This course provides an overview of the major types of addiction, patterns of intoxication and withdrawal, and an introduction to treatment.
Psychological Testing
Dr. Fern Leventhal, 1 month
Aspects of assessment of intelligence and cognitive functioning are discussed with attention paid to profiles of neuropsychological functioning in various psychiatric disorders.
Behavioral Therapy
Dr. Gordon Ball, 3 weeks
This is a critical overview of behavior therapy linking current research advances to specific clinical strategies. Residents learn how to do a behavioral assessment and devise a treatment plan. Some of the specific techniques taught are relaxation methods, desensitization, and habit control.
Evidence Based Clinical Practice
Dr. Joanna Steinglass, 2 months
In this series of seminars residents learn to critically review the literature and develop skills in practice-based learning.
Cross Cultural Psychiatry and Cultural Formulation
Dr. Roberto Lewis Fernandez, 3 months
This is an introduction to cross cultural psychiatry. Topics covered include impact of language on evaluation and treatment, culture-specific syndromes, folk belief systems, and other issues that reflect the impact of culture on one's identity and on psychiatric illness. During the course, each resident will write up a cultural formulation on one of their patients which will be discussed in class.
Introduction to the ER and Consultation Liaison
Drs. Carlos Almeida and Phil Muskin, 1 week
This lecture provides an overview of general psychiatric emergencies such as the suicidal, the violent, and the acutely psychotic patient and management of such in the emergency room and consultation liaison settings in preparation for PGYIII clinical responsibilities.
Psychiatric Ethics
Drs. David Strauss and David Lowenthal, 4 weeks
Psychiatric Ethics is a course focusing on several of the major ethical issues that residents may face during their residency and will almost certainly confront throughout their careers as psychiatrists. Topics include boundary crossings and violations; ethical issues in research settings; issues surrounding patient confidentiality and autonomy; and conflicts of interest, particularly relationships involving the pharmaceutical industry. The course uses actual case examples to illustrate points wherever possible.
Long Term Case Presentations and Consensus Conference
Dr. Deborah Cabaniss, 3 months – Monday and Thursday
This course introduces the PGY-II residents to assessment of patients for psychotherapy and to the written case formulation. Each week, one resident prepares a written formulation of his/her long-term psychotherapy case and distributes this to the class. In the Monday class, Dr. Cabaniss interviews the patient and the class discusses the interview. In the Thursday class, the group reviews the data from the written formulation, interview, and enhanced assessment battery (conducted prior to the conference) to reach a consensus diagnosis.
Assessment and Management of Suicidal Behavior
Dr. Barbara Stanley, 1 month
This course focuses on the assessment and classification of suicidal behavior and self injurious behavior without suicidal intent and a review of risk factors associated with suicidal behavior to aid residents in disposition planning, particularly the decision to hospitalize. The course also teaches residents brief interventions to do with suicidal patients to mitigate risk and basic management techniques to employ when treating suicidal patients.
Legal Issues in Psychiatry
Dr. Paul Appelbaum, 4 weeks
This course provides an overview of legal issues as they relate to the practice of psychiatry. Included are discussions of civil commitment (including outpatient commitment), informed consent, decisionmaking competence, and the duty protect potential victims of patients' violence. Principles underlying the evolution of the legal framework for psychiatric practice are emphasized.
PGY 3 Year
Public Psychiatry- Integrating Systems of Care for Severe Mental Illness
Dr. Stephanie LeMelle, 4 weeks
These are second in the series of lectures that will cover topics related to the care of people with severe mental illness in the community. This series will focus on systems of care and integrated services. Topics will include: dual diagnosis treatment, criminal justice involvement, patient and family advocacy, and integrated medical care.
Psychopharmacology and Neuroscience
Drs. Joshua Gordon and Jay Gingrich, 8 months
Case discussions drawn from the residents’ outpatient practices are used as a starting point to review and discuss psychopharmacological and neuroscience principles. The course is divided into units grouped by disorder (Affective Disorders, Schizophrenia, etc). Each unit features informal discussions led by leading psychopharmacologists and neuroscientists drawn from the Columbia faculty. Cases are solicited from the residents in advance to ensure appropriate coverage of important issues.
Health Policy
Dr. Harold Pincus, 3 weeks
This course will focus on issues of Health Policy with a particular emphasis on patient safety, the practice of evidence-based medicine, quality improvement and empirically testing quality of patient care.
Child Psychopathology
Dr. Chrzanowski, 2 months
This is an introduction to the major emotional, behavioral, and developmental disturbances of childhood and adolescence, including mood and anxiety disorders, attention deficit disorder and conduct disorder.
Traumatic Stress
Drs. Yuval Neria and Paula Panzer, 1 month
The assessment and treatment of patients who have sustained physical/ sexual abuse, the witnessing of violence, and other traumatic events is discussed. The course covers epidemiology, neurobiology, differential diagnosis, treatment techniques, and clinical case examples.
Chemical Dependency
Dr. Frances Levin, 6 weeks
The common features of chemical dependency are described including the development of chemical dependency, its diagnosis and treatment. Specific issues for the treatment of alcohol, cocaine, opiate and other drug abuse and dependence are discussed, as well as the neurological underpinnings of addiction in brain reward mechanisms.
Sexual Development and Pathology
Drs. Jennifer Downey and Richard Friedman, 9 weeks
This course presents selected topics in human sexuality -- sexuality during the life cycle, the development of gender identity and sexual orientation, sex and the family including incest, pornography and paraphilias, and sexuality in older years and in the presence of physical illness. The approach is to discuss first the pathology as it presents to the psychiatrist and then to discuss current scholarship as it pertains to etiology and treatment.
Clinical Psychodynamics II
Course Director Deborah Cabaniss, Instructors – Sabrina Cherry, Justin Richardson, and Ruth Graver, 10 months
Clinical Psychodynamics II is about psychoanalytic psychotherapy. This year-long, weekly course is divided into 4 parts based on the following questions: Part I - What it is, how do we think it works, and who is it for? Part II – How do we do it? (technique) Part III – How did our patients come to be the way they are? (case formulation) Part IV – How do we write about our work? Classes are generally based on clinical material. Students participate actively in class and complete written work during each section, which helps them to actively integrate concepts. LTT supervision during this year is coordinated with class work to create a “course and lab” synergy. By the end of the year, students write and share a complete write-up of a long-term case, including history, diagnostic assessment, treatment summary, and psychodynamic case formulation.
Human Sexuality
Drs. Anke Ehrhardt and Theresa Exner, 5 weeks
The Human Sexuality course focuses on common female and male sexual dysfunctions and up-to-date treatment modalities for these disorders. It takes an interdisciplinary approach that includes guest lecturers with different perspectives on therapy, i.e., behavioral, psychodynamic, and group therapy. Topics include current areas of particular interest, such as rape, AIDS, and bisexuality.
Evaluation and Treatment Selection
Drs. John Sahs, Joan Storey and Cathy Friedman, 1 month
This course provides an overview of the outpatient evaluation process and addresses issues related to how to decide which treatments are appropriate and feasible in particular clinical situations.
Combined Psychotherapy and Psychopharmacology and Split Treatment
Dr. Aneil Shirke, 6 weeks
This course presents a clinically-near approach to the various ways of combining psychopharmacology and psychotherapy. Clinical material from the experience of the lecturers and residents are used to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of different models for treatments that combine medications and therapy. The course also addresses issues related to psychopharm management with patients who are being treated in therapy with other mental health providers.
Group Therapy
Dr. Milton Wainberg, 1 month
An overview of group therapy is presented with an emphasis on clinical issues. The initial focus is on evaluation and diagnosis of patients for whom group therapy is indicated. Through lectures and role-playing exercises, residents learn about the role of the group leader and group dynamics.
Family Therapy
Dr. Henry Spitz, 4 weeks
This course focuses on theoretical aspects of outpatient treatment of families, including families that present for treatment with an ill member, including a child, and families that seek treatment for conflict or other familial process. Indications for family therapy. initial interview techniques and commonly encountered clinical management problems, particularly countertransference in family work, form the specific aspects of this course.
Supportive Therapy
Dr. Carolyn Douglas, 2 months
This course begins with a discussion of ego function assessment and its application in determining a particular patient's suitability for insight-oriented versus supportive psychotherapy. Techniques and strategies in supportive work are reviewed in detail and contrasted with more purely exploratory approaches, with extensive use of clinical examples. Speculations are offered concerning how patients change in supportive treatment. Didactic lectures are supplemented by readings from the literature and residents are encouraged to contribute examples from their own work with patients.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Drs. Michael Devlin and Efrat Aahronovich, 11 weeks
This course provides a foundation in theoretical principles and clinical skills of cognitive behavioral therapy. The course is supplemented with individual supervision in CBT.
Interpersonal Therapy
Drs. John Markowitz and Peter Shapiro, 7 weeks
This course reviews time-limited psychotherapy and focuses on Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT), a treatment for major depression and other psychiatric disorders. Classes include didactics on basic principles and technique, as well as review of clinical material. The course is supplemented with group supervision in IPT.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
Drs. Barbara Stanley and Beth Brodsky, 7 weeks
This seminar provides clinical therapeutic and management techniques for treating the difficult-to-manage patient and reducing self injurious behavior.
ER Case Conference
Drs. Holly Schneier and Ellen Stevenson, 6 sessions
Clinical cases are presented for discussion with a special focus on psychopharmacologic and psychosocial management in the hospital setting.
Drug-Drug Interactions
Dr. Lewis Opler, 3 weeks
This course provides a review of pharmacokinetics and drug-drug interactions, both in theory and in practice
Managed Care
Dr. David Kahn, 1 week
This is an introduction to managed care and covers the medical economics leading to managed care, terminology and adaptations.
School Based Mental Health
Dr. Richard Eichler, 2 weeks
These lectures focus on the unique aspects of providing mental health care within undergraduate and graduate school systems.
Emergency Psychiatry
Drs. Carlos Almeida and Brett Blatter, 10 sessions
This course teaches the basics of the theory, assessment, management, and brief treatment of common psychiatric emergencies. It describes crisis intervention, systems theory, medical model, and use of modified psychoanalytic techniques as the basic theoretical approaches to psychiatric emergencies. The course focuses on the specific applications of these approaches to patients who are in crisis, are suicidal or homicidal, or who have delirium, dementia, or an acute substance abuse problem.
Evidence Based Medicine for Psychotherapeutics
Dr. Joanna Steinglass, 8 weeks
Discusses the scientific evidence behind many of the common psychopharmacology and psychotherapy treatments for a variety of psychiatric disorders.
Medical Student Teaching
Dr. Janis Cutler, one week
This course introduces residents to their role as educators to medical students in the emergency psychiatry setting.
Mock Board Introduction
Drs.Carlos Almeida and Brett Blatter, 1 week
Residents are introduced the board style interview sessions that are conducted twice during their year-long rotation in the emergency room.
Legal Issues in Psychiatry
Dr. Paul Applebaum, 5 weeks
This course deals with the critical legal issues that affect the treatment of psychiatric patients, including the insanity defense, involuntary hospitalization, informed consent, confidentiality, malpractice and the dangerous patient. It is continued for an additional 5 weeks in the PGY 4 year.
PGY 4 Year
Public Psychiatry- Leadership and Management in Community Psychiatry
Dr Stephanie LeMelle, 4 weeks
These are third in the series of lectures that will cover topics related to the care of people with severe mental illness in the community. This series of lectures will focus on fiscal and administrative systems and on the role of the psychiatrist in these systems.
Neuropsychiatry
Drs. Jon Levenson and Gerry Hurowitz, nine weeks
This course reviews the behavioral, emotional and cognitive difficulties of patients with major neurologic disorders including traumatic brain injury, seizure disorder, movement disorders, stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, HIV and Alzheimer's disease. Assessment and treatment of these disorders are discussed. Faculty include members of both the psychiatry and neurology departments.
Clinical Neuropsychiatry
Drs. Brian Fallon and Scott Schobel, 2 weeks
Advances in brain imaging technology has led to new insight into the complex messaging and neurocircuitry of the brain. This course reviews the various imaging modalities currently available and how they contribute to our understanding of mental illness effects on the brain.
Telepsychiatry
Dr. Steven Hyler, 2 weeks
This seminar is an introduction to the new field of telepsychiatry. As part of the course each resident will have the opportunity to participate in a supervised telepsychiatry consultation for a patient at a rural mental health clinic, state prison, or an upstate OMH in-patient facility.
Erotic Transference and Psychodynamic Process
Dr. Gloria Stern, 8 weeks
This course deals with how sexual identity issues influence the development of erotic and eroticized transferences. Implications for the countertransference are discussed. Using case material, psychoanalytic process and technique are discussed and correlated with clinical theory. Popular topics in psychodynamic process are also discussed and include: modifications of technique for different character types, treatment stalemates, advanced use of dreams, special issues of private practice, evaluation of treatment results, seeing family members and criteria for termination.
Demonstration of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Dr. Lyle Rosnick, 12 weeks
A video-taped long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy is presented and discussed by the senior faculty member who conducted the treatment.
Psychotherapy of Psychosis
Dr. Eric Marcus, 4 weeks
The textbook Psychosis and Near Psychosis is used to describe mental structure and treatment of psychotic and near psychotic disorders.
Brief Dynamic Therapy
Dr. Alan Barasch, 9 weeks
This course and weekly seminar focus on how the basic concepts and techniques of analytic psychotherapy are flexibly adapted in brief therapy. This includes selection criteria, focusing the treatment, handling of material from patients' current and past object relationships, transference, and use of the time limit and terminations. Major historical contributions to current brief dynamic theory are discussed. Residents in the year long seminar present and discuss clinical material from brief dynamic psychotherapy cases.
Brief Dynamic Therapy Seminar
Dr. Alan Barasch, 7 months
This course builds upon the brief dynamic Therapy course. Residents participating present and discuss clinical material from brief dynamic psychotherapy cases.
Termination
Dr. Robert Glick, 4 weeks
Issues that arise in planned and forced termination, referral to other clinicians and continuation with patients in private practice are discussed.
Research in Psychiatry
TBD, 4 weeks
This course addresses a variety of types of research from double-blind placebo-controlled studies to case reports. Residents learn about the usefulness and limitations of each and the questions that can be assessed.
Supervising and Teaching Medical Students
Drs. Lisa Mellman, Kelli Harding and Janis Cutler, 5 sessions
In this interactive course, residents learn the important elements in conducting supervision of psychotherapy, including establishing an alliance, listening to session material and determining how and when to intervene. They also learn how to plan and conduct a successful lecture.
Psychiatric Ethics
Drs. David Lowenthal and David Strauss, 7 weeks
This course addresses current controversies in psychiatric ethics, including sexual misconduct with patients and colleagues, research ethics, and ethical problems in a variety of different clinical circumstances.
Office Practice
Dr. Claire Holderness, 4 weeks
Leaving the residency and beginning a private practice is difficult for all residents. This course provides practical information on starting one's practice. Topics include: finding an office, setting a fee, record keeping, as well as treatment issues that relate specifically to private practice and managed care settings.
Legal Issues in Psychiatry
Dr. Paul Applebaum, 5 weeks
This course deals with the critical legal issues that affect the treatment of psychiatric patients, including the insanity defense, involuntary hospitalization, informed consent, confidentiality, malpractice and the dangerous patient.
Oral Boards with Vignette Review
Dr. Steven Hyler, 4 weeks
This seminar teaches residents what to expect in the oral board examination and how to prepare. Videos of patient interviews are used to teach residents the board format.
Independent Projects
Drs. Melissa Arbuckle and Maria Oquendo, 6 weeks
In this seminar each PGY 4 resident makes a brief presentation on a topic of his or her current interest, often a research project, which is then discussed.
Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine
Dr. Philip Muskin, 20 – 22 sessions
This course presents “core curriculum” in the field of consultation-liaison psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine. Topics include: delirium; dementia; intoxication and withdrawal syndromes seen in the medical setting; psychiatric disorders in various medical conditions such as heart disease, lung disease, liver disease, AIDS, pregnancy, and cancer; somatoform and factitious disorders; techniques of psychotherapy with the medically ill; hypnosis; management of substance abuse and dependence in the medical setting; legal and ethical issues; pain management; palliative and end-of-life care issues.
Couples Therapy
Dr. Henry Spitz, 3 weeks
This course is an introduction to the evaluation and psychotherapeutic treatment of the dyadic couple presenting in the outpatient setting. Advanced couples therapy training is also available as an elective.
Self Psychology
Dr. Jeffrey Halpern, 4 weeks
This course will review basic concepts of self psychology and will then offer advanced concepts in theory and technique.
Psychotherapy and Neuroscience
Dr. Anna Schwartz, 5 weeks
Co-taught by a psychoanalyst and a neuroscientist, this course will explore theories about the way in which psychotherapy works from a neuroscience perspective.
Cognitive Neuroscience
Dr. Ed Smith, 4 weeks
It is becoming increasingly apparent that psychiatric disorders are typically accompanied by various cognitive deficits. To understand these deficits, it is useful to understand normal cognition, as studied by Cognitive Neuroscience, an interdisciplinary approach to mind and brain that relies on neuroimaging and behavioral methods. This course focuses on those domains of cognition that seem most affected in psychiatric disorders, including memory and executive processes.
Geriatrics
Dr. Davangere Devanand, 7 weeks
This course surveys normal physiological, pharmacokinetic and psychosocial changes associated with aging with special emphasis the assessment and treatment of mild cognitive disorders, dementia, depression, psychosis and agitation in the elderly.
Board Review Course
Drs. David Merrill and Carolyn Rodriguez, 5 months
In this course, PGY4 residents present and review high yield topics relative to the written boards, with a particular emphasis on neurology and biological psychiatry.
For All Residents
The Brain: A Neuroscience Review
Dr. Ramin Parsey, 2 months
This course addresses current research on brain circuits underlying higher cognitive functions, including emotions, reward mechanisms, executive functions, and how, when dysregulated, they can lead to mood, anxiety, psychotic and addictive disorders. This course is taught as a review for the combined residency classes and repeated yearly.
Psychiatry Departmental Grand Rounds
Rotates among visiting and attending faculty from the Department of Psychiatry, weekly for 11 months
Lectures for the faculty and house staff on the most recent advances and research in Psychiatry followed by a lunch discussion
