What is the Child Global and Community Psychiatry Area of Distinction?

The Child Global and Community Psychiatry Area of Distinction aims to provide interested fellows with leadership training in global and community child psychiatry through mentorship, didactics, clinical electives, a scholarly project, and case conferences. The CGCP Area of Distinction aims to improve the ability of graduating fellows to obtain advanced experiences in education, advocacy, clinical care and/or research in global or community psychiatry.

What are the requirements for the Area of Distinction?

Fellows accepted into the Child Global and Community Psychiatry Area of Distinction must meet all of the following requirements by the end of fellowship:

• Meeting quarterly in the first year and monthly in the second year for mentoring with a CGCP faculty.
• Participating in CGCP/GCP meetings at least quarterly.
• Completion of a CGCP project/experience in the second year of fellowship. Potential CGCP projects include, but not limited by, the following:           

1) systems of care experience that goes beyond required community rotation;

2) child/family cases in the asylum clinic;

3) CGCP advocacy/policy experience;

4) developing/implementing a new lecture on a CGCP topic;

5) CGCP research project/scholarly activity

What topics are covered during the concentration didactics?

Clinical experiences:

• • Asylum Evaluations
  • TIES for Families (working with the foster care system)
  • Juvenile Justice settings (Halls, Camps, Courts, etc.)
  • School-Based Mental Health Clinic
  • Regional Center Clinic
  • Global Psychiatry experiences (when available)

Special populations:

• • Working with families experiencing homelessness
  • Immigrant children/families
  • Racial/Ethnic-specific populations

County/system education/consultation:

• • Work with Division of Population Behavioral Health team on project (create educational course and/or materials, conduct program evaluation, conduct listening sessions to systems such as LAUSD, contribute to research/publication)

For more information about UCLA Community and Global Psychiatry at the Semel Institute, please click here.

What is the Clinician-Educator Area of Distinction?

The Clinician-Educator Area of Distinction aims to provide interested residents with formal training in medical education through a structured curriculum on educational principles, mentoring with clinician-educator faculty, and the opportunity to work on an educational innovation. The Area of Distinction aims to improve the ability of graduating residents to obtain junior faculty positions or other roles where they can stay engaged in teaching and education.

What are the requirements for the Area of Distinction? 

Fellows accepted into the Clinician-Educator Area of Distinction must meet all of the following requirements by the end of fellowship:

• Meet monthly with a faculty clinician-educator during the first and second years of the fellowship for mentorship.
• Participate in a medical education-focused journal or book club to occur during monthly mentoring meetings.
• Attend clinician-educator didactics, combined with UCLA psychiatry residents, focused on educational principles during the second year of fellowship.
• Teach a peer-to-peer didactic during the second year of fellowship.
• Complete a teaching project during the second year of fellowship. Potential projects include developing a new lecture, improving an existing didactic series, creation of an online lecture series, or creation of an educational aid. Projects should be guided by evidence-based educational techniques wherever possible (e.g., use of active learning over passive learning) and should be designed in such a way that their impact on learners can be measured objectively. 

What topics are covered during the concentration didactics?

Topics included in the concentration coursework include, but are not limited to:

• Introduction to a Career as a Clinician-Educator
• How to Make Effective Slide-Based Presentations
• Stages of Learning: Romance, Precision, and Generalization 
• Learning Objectives: Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes
• Educational Strategies
• Accounting for Clinical Experiences in Didactic Education
• Conducting a Needs Assessment
• Principles of Effective Feedback
• Communicating with the Public About Psychiatry
• Small Group Learning
• On-the-Fly Teaching Strategies
• Principles of Storytelling
• A Primer on Learning and Memory
• Email Management Strategies
• Creative Scholarship for Aspiring Clinician-Educators
• Developing and Maintaining a Curriculum Vitae
• Contract Negotiation

What is the Parent-Infant Mental Health Area of Distinction?

The Parent-Infant Mental Health Area of Distinction aims to provide interested fellows with formal training in parent-infant and early childhood mental health through a structured curriculum focused on development, temperament,  matrescence, attachment theory, attunement, and early childhood psychopathology. The Area of Distinction aims to support child psychiatry trainees in understanding relationship-oriented therapies and to focus therapeutic efforts on bolstering the parent-infant/child connection.

What are the Requirements for the Area of Distinction?

Fellows accepted into the Parent-Infant Mental Health Area of Distinction must meet all the following requirements by the end of fellowship:

• Meet monthly with a designated faculty expert and mentor during the first and second years of fellowship.
• Participate in a quarterly journal club to include review of seminal articles, impactful book chapters, and influential film series in addition to hearing from invited guest speakers.
• Choose an AOD-specific experiential activity during the CF2 year such as:
  ○ Help create and present parent-infant didactic content to UCLA medical students, psychiatry residents, psychology interns, child psychiatry fellows, or other learners that is focused on parenting, infant development and attachment principles
  ○ Facilitate a group after completion of the Circle of Security Parenting or Reflective Parenting Training
  ○ Engage in a relevant clinical experience including, but not limited to, the UCLA Maternal Outpatient Mental health Services (MOMS) Clinic in the Department of OB-GYN, the UCLA Maternal Mental Health Partial Hospitalization Program/Intensive Outpatient Program, or the Cheerful Helpers Organization focusing on parent-child dyadic play therapy
  ○ Participate in a research project related to parent-infant mental health
• Completion of a capstone project report or grand rounds on a topic related to Parent-Infant Mental Health.

What Topics are Covered During Didactics?

• Neuroscience & Epigenetics
• Pregnancy, Birth & Parenting
• Newborn & Early Childhood Assessment
• Developmental Risk and Resilience
• The Meaning and Influence of Culture
• Developmental Psychopathology
• Reflective Practice & Reflective Supervision
• Dyadic Infant-Parent Psychotherapy
• Observation, Cueing & Coding
• Brazelton’s Touchpoints Framework
• Regulatory Challenges of Infancy & Early Childhood (Sleeping, Feeding, Crying)
• Sensory Processing Differences & Challenges
• Effects of Trauma and Maltreatment
• Disorders of Relating & Communicating
• Child & Parent Depression, other Mood Disorders & Mental Illness
• Family Systems Theory and Interventions
• Diagnostic Classification Systems
• Neuro-Relational Models of Development

What is the Psychoanalytic Interventions Area of Distinction?

The Psychoanalytic Interventions Area of Distinction aims to provide interested child and adolescent psychiatry fellows with greater exposure to psychoanalytic interventions, both theory and practice, with infants, children, adolescents, emerging adults and their parents/legal guardians and other social groups and communities.  Fellows will attend a two-year course on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy through the New Center for Psychoanalysis (NCP) that covers psychoanalytic perspectives on development, psychopathology, theoretical and technical approaches with younger patients as well as their parents and families.  The fellows will also meet weekly with a child and adolescent psychiatrist-analyst as a supervisor for their outpatient RPC cases as they integrate theory and practice and learn about contemporary psychoanalysis in and out of the consulting room.  Attendance at NCP conferences, events and study groups will be available but optional.  This Area of Distinction aims to provide graduating fellows with greater exposure to and experience in psychoanalytic thinking, theories, clinical practice and contributions beyond the clinical realm.

What are the Requirements for this Area of Distinction?

Fellows accepted into the Psychoanalytic Interventions Area of Distinction must meet all the following requirements by the end of the fellowship:

• Regular attendance and active participation in the NCP Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Program (CAPP) on Tuesday mornings 8:30-11:30 am (Sept-May) during the second year of the fellowship
• Weekly supervision with a faculty child and adolescent psychiatrist-analyst with additional readings provided (minimum 40 hours/year)
• At least 1 long-term psychotherapy case (with psychopharmacologic treatment as needed) over the course of the fellowship with the frequency of individual, family and parent work sessions to be determined by the clinical demands of the case (minimum 60 clinical contact hours/ 1^st year and 80 clinical contact hours/2^nd year)
• Completion of a formal report of one clinical case that details the initial presentation, dynamic formulation, progress of the treatment and the elements that fostered and/or hindered therapeutic action (10-12 pages)
• Attendance at one psychoanalytic conference during the fellowship

What topics are covered in Psychoanalytic Interventions?

The topics include but are not limited to:

• Overview of working with children, parents and families (e.g. Defining treatment and developmental goals, establishing and deepening the therapeutic alliances)
• Typical and Atypical Development of Infants, Children, Adolescents and Emerging Adults
• Psychosexual Theories of Development
• Theory and Techniques of Developmental Support
• Theory and Technique of Psychoanalytic Play Therapy
• Theory and Technique of Psychoanalytic Therapeutic Interventions (e.g. dyadic, individual, family, parent work)
• Attachment Theory, Mentalization and Reflective Function
• Uses and Meanings of Psychopharmacologic Interventions
• Coordination with Allied Professionals
• Transference, Countertransference and Enactments
• Psychopathology (Autistic Spectrum Disorders, ADHD, Developmental Delays and Disabilities, Feeding and Eating Disorders, Aggression, Anxiety Disorders, Mood Disorders, Psychosis, Trauma and PTSD, Psychosomatics)
• Case Formulation
• Contemporary Contributions to Culture, Race, Gender, Sexuality and Identity
• Logistics of Private Practice
• Psychoanalytically-Informed Consultations with Schools, Camps, Community Groups, etc.