The KTGF MSP is a faculty guided, student-led group for any WUSTL medical student interested in learning more about Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (CAP). It receives independent funding from the Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation, which supports a network of approximately 15 MSPs across the country to foster interest in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Why Child and Adolescent Psychiatry?
- Psychiatric illnesses are one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. It’s estimated that 70% of psychiatric illnesses start in childhood or adolescence.
- There are only around 10,000 child and adolescent psychiatrists in the US, which is not enough to serve the growing need.
- There’s growing understanding of how brain development, genetic and epigenetic factors, and environmental influences like trauma and adversity impact psychiatric illness. This puts CAP at the frontier of understanding brain development and providing early interventions to improve children’s lives.
- Playing with kids is part of the job!
Why join the WashU KTGF MSP?
- You can meet child and adolescent psychiatrists, fellows, and other students who are interested in CAP in both formal settings like our annual panel on “What is CAP?”, describing various career pathways in child and adolescent psychiatry as well as the training programs to get there.
- Students can gain early clinical experience – spending time in the CAP outpatient clinics shadowing or attending one of our clinical events such as our interactive play therapy training.
- We provide a network for developing research interests and projects related to CAP. Our faculty sponsor, Dr. Alecia Vogel, is also the CAP Fellowship Assistant Program Director for Research and can meet with interested students to help connect them to potential mentors. There is also an annual virtual conference connecting students interested in CAP research with researchers at various stages of training across the country.
- You can attend the annual KTGF conference – one of the only national conferences specifically dedicated to medical students.
What is the KTGF conference?
Every year, the Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation (KTGF) sponsors a 2-day event at one of the participating medical schools where students can meet and spend time with other students interested in CAP from all over the country and sometimes world. Students can present research projects, clinical cases and meet CAP faculty from the other KTGF medical schools – with travel often covered by the KTGF program!
At the most recent KTGF conference at Yale in Spring 2026, our WashU KTGF leader Lisa Gorham presented on her project understanding the needs of patients presenting with psychiatric chief complaints at the St Louis Children’s Hospital ER and leader Jane Caulfield presented to her proposal to develop a knitting group to improve mindfulness in adolescents with eating disorders. Students participated in collegial “games” with other programs and were able to spend quality time with our co-lead Dr. Eric Spiegel. We’re looking forward to OHSU in January 2027!