Outpatient Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Clinic

• Build a therapeutic alliance with patients and their family or caregivers.
• Engage the patients and their family or caregivers in psychotherapeutic treatment.
• Refine interviewing and communication skills.
• Understand how psychiatric symptoms can be exacerbated or moderated by environmental variables.
• Recognize and tolerate transient provider discomfort during therapeutic sessions unique to the practice of psychotherapy.
• Conceptualize the development of improved patient resiliency through psychotherapy.

The fellow will gain medical knowledge through a combination of clinic-specific supervision, mandatory psychotherapy seminar, and supervised reading of the pertinent or related literature.

• Understand the role of parents, families, and caregivers in developmental psychopathology.
• Understand the major developmental theories.
• Understand theory and evidence related to major psychotherapeutic modalities, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), motivational interviewing, solution-focused brief therapy, and family therapy.

In addition to supervised clinical activities, the fellow will participate in weekly group supervision, including the review and discussion of videotaped psychotherapy sessions.

• Insight into one’s behavior and how it facilitates or not the psychotherapeutic process.
• Insight into one’s communication and how it facilitates or not the psychotherapeutic process.
• Learn to appreciate, recognize, and work with patterns of patient, family, and caregiver behaviors during sessions.

Psychotherapy training will provide the fellow with the opportunity to deepen the development of multiple aspects of professionalism.

• Mindful intra-professional development by managing adaptively their countertransference to youth, the family, or caregivers with psychopathology.
• Mindful use of self-disclosure.
• Appreciate and respect boundary issues.
• Attention to termination issues in psychotherapy.
• Provide clear and constructive feedback to peers.

The fellow will effectively communicate with patients, their family, or caregivers within a psychotherapeutic context.

• Broaden the use of therapeutic understanding by increasing the number of communication techniques.
• Communicate therapeutic goals.
• Address problem-solving and decision-making.
• Attention to complex interactional issues: parent-child, family-child, parent-provider, child-provider, and group.

• Understand the role of a psychotherapist vs. a physician.
• Conceptualize the role of the psychotherapist-psychiatrist.
• Understand the advantages and limitations of medical vs. psychosocial model systems.
• Bridge mental health systems for the benefit of patients, their family, or caregivers.