Didactics Curriculum

Our fellows enjoy dedicated academic half days on Tuesday mornings where they are provided protected time for didactics. We have a core theme topic designated for every month. We cover diagnosis, epidemiology, clinical interview, psychopharmacological treatment, psychotherapy modalities, case conferences, hallmark articles, and the AACAP practice parameters related to the specific core topic.

For example, August 2018 was identified as our “Autism Spectrum Disorders and Developmental Delay” month. Our speakers included our current core faculty from child psychiatry, a retired faculty member with 30+ years of experience with autism, child psychologists from Medical Psychology, a local school psychologist, a pediatric occupational therapist, a pediatric speech pathologist, and our university’s CARD (Center for Autism Related Disorders) representatives.

Psychotherapy curriculum

Psychotherapy training for our fellows is provided by a variety of faculty, including Dr. Michael Shapiro, winner of the prestigious AACAP 2014 Rieger Psychodynamic Psychotherapy award. Dr. Shapiro was also selected as an inaugural recipient of AACAP’s 2018 Psychodynamic Faculty Training and Mentorship Initiative. Dr. Shapiro will use this opportunity to help construct a replicable Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Curriculum for Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. In his role of Director of Psychotherapy Education for the Fellowship, Dr. Shapiro helps ensure that a variety of therapy modalites are covered in didactics, including but not limited to Psychodynamic Therapy (PDT), Parent-Child Interaction Training (PCIT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectic-Behavioral Therapy for Adolescents (DBT-A), Supportive Psychotherapy, Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Adolescents (IPT-A), Mentalization-Based Therapies for Adolescents (MBT-A) and Families (MBT-F) as well as various Family Therapy modalities. We have monthly interdisciplinary case conferences where fellows discuss their psychotherapy cases. We employ role play and a one-way mirror room to practice and demonstrate psychotherapy skills as well. In the last two years, most of our fellows have chosen to use their elective time to learn even more about PCIT.

Each fellow is also assigned 2 hours per week of protected time for individual supervision to discuss their patients, including their psychotherapy cases. Typically, one of the supervisors is a child psychiatrist and the other a child psychologist, so each fellow can seek supervision for their therapy cases based on their needs.