Overview
The UCLA Semel Institute’s Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (CAP) Fellowship Training Program has trained many of our nation’s clinical and research leaders in the field of child psychiatry. The UCLA CAP Fellowship Training Program is an ACGME-accredited program that has two RRC-approved tracks:
- 2-year traditional clinical training program (6 positions per year), and
- 3-year research-clinical training program (1 position per year).
The strengths of our training program are the outstanding quality of our fellows, dedicated and talented faculty, and the tremendous breadth of academic opportunities within UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry and affiliated university and community-based programs throughout Los Angeles County.
Overall, the UCLA CAP Fellowship Program seeks to balance meeting all ACGME requirements while providing opportunities for exposure to the breadth of evidence-based clinical programs and research in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences.
Our program is designed to help fellows develop the skills to:
- Provide a comprehensive biopsychosocial assessment of children and adolescents in general and subspecialty CAP settings
- Intervene using evidence-based assessments and treatments
- Gain competency in all aspects of CAP, learning from faculty who are national and world leaders
- Interpret and apply the latest research in child psychiatry
- Advocate for better mental health services, policies, and social justice for children, adolescents, and their families
- Explore subspecialty CAP areas through our vast elective and research opportunities
First Year
The first year of fellowship is dedicated to laying a solid foundation of clinical skills, where fellows work closely with our faculty and staff experts and learn the roles of a child psychiatrist on a multidisciplinary team, a team that works together to support families and treat children often with severe psychiatric illnesses. Our first-year fellows spend most of their time in our state-of-the-art UCLA hospital settings, including our renowned eating disorders unit, pediatric and emergency room consultation services, adolescent inpatient unit, and our one-of-a-kind KidsConnect, an early childhood partial hospitalization program. Also during the first year of training, fellows will have experiences in long-term psychotherapy with children and adolescents and will learn about the core components of family therapy. Other educational experiences include lecture series that focus on child development and psychopathology, pediatric psychopharmacology, and pediatric psychosomatic medicine in addition to an introductory seminar on research literacy for clinicians.
Second Year
The second year of our child psychiatry fellowship is dedicated to enriching clinical experiences through rotations in our specialty outpatient clinics, each distinctively designed by our faculty. The core didactic series delves more deeply into the latest advances in clinical practice, career exploration and leadership development, and specialized clinical care issues in child psychiatry. A required CAP elective allows fellows to explore areas of interest within child psychiatry, and to collaborate with a faculty mentor, in such areas as leadership and administration, community and global child psychiatry, education, clinical subspecialty training, research, and more! With the vast resources available to our fellows at the UCLA Semel Institute, our broader campus, and all of our partnering agencies across Los Angeles County, fellows have an expansive range of options available and the option to also create their own elective.
For more information about the CAP Fellowship Program, please click below:
Our Research Track
In addition to sharing all the core components of our comprehensive child psychiatry clinical training program, the UCLA Semel Institute’s Child Psychiatry Research Track program is a three-year intensive training program that provides state-of-the-art research training with world-renowned senior research mentors from a broad range of research centers, initiatives, and clinical care research that span modern behavioral neuroscience, social policy and human culture. Our portfolio of research studies, projects and programs is vast, ranging from the genetic molecule up to human communities. Research track child psychiatry fellows have dedicated research time built into their schedules starting in Year 1, and they have more time protected for research each year.
For more information about the Research Track, please click below:
Areas of Distinction
Fellows have a unique opportunity to participate in our Areas of Distinction (AOD) certification program over the course of their 2-year fellowship where they deepen their knowledge base in an area of particular interest. We are pleased to offer four AOD’s: Community-Global Child Psychiatry, Clinician-Educator, Parent-Infant Mental Health, and Psychotherapy with a Psychoanalytic Concentration. The purpose of these AODs is to help fellows develop expertise in an important area of child psychiatry from talented faculty members who will serve as mentors. The hope is that fellows will utilize this educational opportunity to establish themselves as leaders in the field.”
For more information about Areas of Distinction, please click below: