Postgraduate Education

Postgraduate Education

Ronald O. Rieder, M.D., Director, Residency Training
Lisa A. Mellman, M.D., Associate Director, Residency Training
Jules Ranz, M.D., Director, Public Psychiatry Fellowship
Mark Sorensen, M.D., Director, Columbia University Program for Creedmoor Residency Training

The quality of residents recruited into the program for 2000 remains superior as the department continues to attract the top applicants nationally. PGY-I residents who began in July 2000 represent diverse backgrounds, have a broad spectrum of clinical and research interests, and have demonstrated significant achievement. Our ability to recruit outstanding residents is a reflection of our excellent faculty and residents, educational program, resources and departmental reputation. The tireless efforts of faculty and residents on the Residency Selection Committee play an essential role in recruitment.

The variety of residency tracks offered by the department continues to foster development of special areas within an integrated residency program. All tracks continue to recruit and graduate outstanding clinicians, teachers, and administrators. Research track residents who initiated the track in 1994 are now graduates pursuing research interests. The new affiliation in 1998 between Presbyterian Hospital and Stamford Hospital resulted in the addition of a community hospital internship in medicine and psychiatry, now in its third year of operation, for our PGY-I residents.

There are 43 psychiatry residents in the adult psychiatry program: 10 PGY-I's who will be joined by two PGY-II entry residents next year, 12 PGY-II's, 12 PGY-III's, and 9 PGY-IV's. Twelve residents graduated from the Adult Psychiatry residency in June of 2000. Many of the graduates remain affiliated with the department in some capacity. Their careers continue to reflect the diversity of departmental activities and of the educational program. Three entered research fellowships at NYSPI, two are continuing in the Child Psychiatry residency at Columbia, one became a Consultation-Liaison Fellow at Columbia, one entered the Public Psychiatry Fellowship at NYSPI, and three took attending-teaching positions on the Columbia faculty. Of those who left, one entered a Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship at NYU, and one a Substance Abuse Fellowship at NYU. In addition, three of the graduates are continuing psychoanalytic training at the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Most graduates opened part-time private practices.

During 2000, the Residency Training program continued to settle into state-of-the-art quarters in the new Psychiatric Institute. Our new home provides office and teaching space for residents and staff in a conveniently located education wing with easy proximity to conference rooms and teaching equipment. Each resident office is equipped with a new computer and web access.

The psychopharmacology Listserv, implemented in 1998 for residents and teaching faculty to address pharmacology questions that arise, has continued to thrive. This has been a boon to our educational process and is well utilized by residents and staff who both pose and answer questions.

Two new courses were introduced into the curriculum in 2000 in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Pharmacokinetics. The Cross Cultural Psychiatry Program was expanded to include evaluation of cultural competence.

The PGY-I year for the clinical track was altered this year to allow interns a three-month elective experience on the Eye-6 general psychiatry service, directed by Stan Arkow, M.D. Two interns chose this option, leading this service to expand its teaching capability. These residents join medical students and residents from the Creedmoor program already being trained there.

PI residents have continued to perform in an outstanding fashion nationally. On the PRITE exam, an annual national written exam in psychiatry, the resident classes performed in the 97^th99^th percentile.

PI residents continue to receive national fellowships and to be recognized nationally. The following residents received fellowships and awards in 2000: Serena Volpp APA Minority Fellowship and Association of Women Psychiatrists Fellowship; Steven Rudin APA/Bristol-Myers Squibb Fellowship; Mark Groves APA/Glaxo Wellcome Fellowship; Suzanne Yang American Psychoanalytic Association Fellowship; Joshua Gordon Laughlin Fellowship; Benjamin McCommon Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry Ginsburg Fellowship; Arielle Stanford APA/Janssen Scholars in Research; Elizabeth Bromley American College of Psychiatrists PRITE Fellowship; Jordan Karp American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry/Bristol Myers Squibb Fellowship. The graduating residents honored Yoram Yovell, M.D., Ph.D. as Teacher of the Year.

Dr. Mellman was named Co-Chair of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and American Psychiatric Association Task Forces on Competency.

Psychotherapy research progressed in the PI Psychotherapy Clinic under the direction of Dr. Mellman. One-year follow-up in the outcome study of twice-weekly psychodynamic psychotherapy is completed, and data analysis is in progress. The first validation study of the Scales of Psychological Capacities is completed, and further revision and validation studies are planned. Drs. Mullen, Rieder, and Glick developed a psychodynamic psychotherapy test, the first of its kind that has been administered to over 900 residents nationwide. The validity study showed it has promise as a measure of psychodynamic psychotherapy skills among residents.

Research Fellowship Programs

Ten fellows in the fellowships directed by Postgraduate Education completed research training in 2000: Drs. Karen Anderson, Laura Boylan, Justine Kent, Ramin Parsey, Diana Martinez, Laurel Mayer, Giovanni Placidi, Stuart Seidman, Blair Simpson, and Gregory Sullivan. Drs. Anderson, Parsey, Martinez, Mayer, Seidman and Simpson are continuing in full-time research at Columbia. The others are also doing research on a part-time basis in academic centers. All received prestigious K Awards from NIMH or other NIH Institutes. In July 2000, there were 11 research fellows beginning or continuing in the research training programs conducted in this department.

Of the five in the NIMH Fellowship in Affective, Anxiety, and Related Disorders, four are focusing on anxiety disorders, one on affective disorders. Six are in the Schizophrenia Research Fellowship. The specific areas of research of these fellows vary widely and reflect exciting basic and clinical research topics, for example, imaging of brain biochemistry using PET, MRI and MRS, neuropathological investigations, animal models of schizophrenia and addiction, genetic studies of antidepressant drug response and new methods of drug delivery. Former fellows, now Columbia faculty, who have gone on to receive substantial research funding include Drs. Michael Liebowitz, Jack Gorman, Steven Roose, Devangere Devanand, Laszlo Papp, Franklin Schneier, Jennifer Downey, Jonathan Javitch, James Knowles, Alan Brown, Michael Devlin, Brian Fallon, Dolores Malaspina, Mitchell Nobler, Edward Nunes, Kathleen Pike, Zafar Sharif, Jeremy Coplan, Julie Hatterer, Margaret Spinelli, Sarah Lisanby, Randall Marshall, Jay Gingrich, Lawrence Kegeles, Pamela Collins, and Ramin Mojtabai. Other fellowship graduates have been similarly successful at other universities.

Public Psychiatry Fellowship

The Public Psychiatry Fellowship continues to attract outstanding Fellows as the premier Fellowship of its type in the country. Applicants in the past few years have come from New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, Washington, DC, Florida, Texas, California, Oregon, and Washington State. In the past three years applicants have also been received from Canada.

The Fellowship has noticed an interesting recent development. Over the past few years there has been a significant increase in the number of psychiatrists applying to the Fellowship after having worked for several years post-residency. In fact, four of this year's nine Fellows have worked between one to eight years after residency before joining the Fellowship. A common theme among applicants is having experienced the well-known dissatisfactions that can occur while working in the public sector, which include feelings of isolation, lack of professional affiliation, and marginalization within their organizations. The applicants have learned that the Fellowship has had considerable documented success in helping Fellows and alumni deal with these problems. It does so by providing them with a conceptual orientation and by offering the ongoing support necessary to sustain productive careers in the public sector. In most cases, the Fellow's field placement becomes the first year of a public sector job. Ongoing support is achieved by continued involvement in Fellowship activities after completing the one-year Fellowship, and includes individual presentations to subsequent Fellows, ongoing consultations with the faculty, group meetings, and an e-mail network. The faculty believes this ongoing support to be crucial to the success of the Fellowship.

Fellows continue to work in non-traditional community service agencies in increasing numbers. This year five Fellows are working in agencies providing services to the homeless: two at the Fort Washington Shelter (one each in the CTI and Project Renewal programs at the shelter), two at the Project for Psychiatric Outreach to the Homeless, and a fifth in the Residential Community Service of residential services at St. Luke's/Roosevelt Medical Center. Two Fellows are working in social service agencies: one at FEGS (in several supported residences) and another at VNS (on an ACT team). Only two are working in hospital settings: one at NY Presbyterian's Hispanic Clinic and another at Gouverneur Hospital's Asian Bicultural Clinic.

The Fellowship continues to investigate the role of the psychiatrist as medical director in public agencies. After publishing three articles on surveys of Public Psychiatry Fellowship alumni, Dr. Ranz expanded his research through surveys of the membership of two national organizations, the American Association of Community Psychiatrists (AACP) and the American Association of Psychiatric Administrators (AAPA). These surveys provide new and valuable information about the role of the psychiatrist as medical director in public agencies, and the results have been published in two articles, one in the May 2000 issue of Administration and Policy in Mental Health and the second in the July 2000 issue of Psychiatric Services. Finally, a third article will be published this year in Community Mental Health Journal.

Activities and Awards of Alumni David Hellerstein has been appointed Clinical Director of New York State Psychiatric Institute.

Warren Ng, is a fellow in the APIRE/Janssen Public Policy Leadership Program.

Tae-Yeon Hwang organized and ran a WHO-supported two-day symposium on Psychosocial Rehabilitation Techniques Training in Yongin City, Korea in August, 2000. This symposium was attended by almost 400 mental health professionals.

Stephanie LeMelle has been appointed to the Scientific Program Committee of the APA Annual Meeting.

Abdullah Hassan has been awarded a Van Amerigen grant to expand services in South Asian clinic he created at Bellevue Hospital.

Creedmoor Psychiatric Center Program

The Columbia-Creedmoor Residency Education and Training Affiliation continued into its eighteenth year. There are sixteen residents in the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center Residency Program: four PGY-Is, five PGY-IIs, three PGY-IIIs and four PGY-IVs. The Columbia portion of the curriculum provides comprehensive training in psychodynamic psychotherapy, human development, psychopharmacology, and human sexuality. There are extensive clinical rotations at the New York Presbyterian Hospital's Columbia Presbyterian Campus including the Neuro-6 Evaluation Clinic and Adult Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic, the Eye-6 General Psychiatry Service, the Comprehensive Emergency Psychiatry Program, and the Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison Service. Creedmoor PGY-I and II residents are assigned to the Schizophrenia Research Unit at Creedmoor, a joint endeavor of Creedmoor and Columbia. For nine years now, Columbia third-year medical students have been assigned to Creedmoor's Residency Training Unit. Creedmoor faculty supervise these students at the Neuro-6 Clinic, providing continued evidence of Columbia's confidence in Creedmoor. Some 20 Creedmoor staff hold Columbia faculty positions, and various faculty are actively involved in Columbia resident supervision as well as teaching at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Recent graduates have gone into fellowship training in Geriatric Psychiatry at Long Island Jewish, Child Psychiatry at Dartmouth, and Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry at Downstate Medical Center.

From left to right, Chief Residents, Dr. Brett Blatter, Dr. Amar Das, and Dr. Rebecca Chaplan

Psychiatric Residents 2000-2001

PGY II	PGY III	PGY IV
Elizabeth Bromley Dianna Dragatsi Sylvia Emmerich David Leonardo Amir Levine-Almog Alan Liu Richard Nathanson Ankur Saraiya David Sherman Arielle Stanford Joanna Steinglass Susan Turner	Mark Groves Jordan Karp Pamela Maskara Benjamin McCommon William Olcott Britta Ostermeyer Steven Rudin Aneil Shirke Susan Stern Serena Volpp William Wu Suzanne Yang	Alycia Bartley Brett Blatter, Chief Resident Rebecca Chaplan, Chief Resident Amar Das, Chief Resident Amelia Gallitano-Mendel Joshua Gordon Karyn Horowitz Hallie Lightdale Seth McGowan Sanjay Mathew Jenny Meyer Colman Tarique Perera

Dr. Lisa Mellman, Dr. Ronald Rieder, and Dr. John Oldham, far right, with the 2000 Graduating Residents,
from left to right, Drs. Anthony Tranguch, Susan Swick, Stephen Ross, David Ott, Andreas Kraebber, Edward Kenny, Claire Holderness, David Gutman, Cathryn Galanter, Juliana Ekong, Joshua Berman, and Mark Wilson