The Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship provides a two-year program of specialized training in child and adolescent psychiatry. Harbor-UCLA is a joint venture of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, and the University of California at Los Angeles. As one of the 3 public hospitals in Los Angeles County, Harbor-UCLA is the community safety-net hospital for nearly 3 million people. Our public mission is to provide the highest quality care for our main patient population: low income, underserved minorities.

Who we treat and where you train

Child and adolescent psychiatry fellows gain experience with a wide variety of patient populations, diagnoses, and treatment settings. Although the main patient population are youth with public insurance or no health insurance, in your rotations in at UCLA Westwood and during your elective time, you will work with more middle-class, insured groups. Both at UCLA Westwood and at Harbor-UCLA, fellows will gain experience with the variety of systems that care for our youth: school, foster care, juvenile justice, and the Regional Centers (developmental disability) that are key partners in improving the mental health outcomes and functional status of our patients.

Our vision of training

The Child and Adolescent Fellowship is designed to offer fellows a well-balanced clinical experience with broad exposure to children and families who need assessment, treatment, and the prevention of psychopathology.  Fellows are taught to view patients and their families from a developmental perspective using a variety of orientations: psychodynamic, psychosocial, biological, behavioral and cognitive. Both competence and compassion are stressed. Fellows are taught to think rigorously about diagnosis, as well as to be conversant in evidence-based treatment in child mental health.

Fellows are expected to gain experience following patients longitudinally in preparation for practice after fellowship. There are multiple opportunities for trainees to develop growing competence in a variety of domains: clinical service, consultation, teaching, and administration.

What we hope for you when you graduate

Upon successful completion of the program, fellows will be qualified for competent independent practice in both child and adolescent psychiatry and adult psychiatry and will be eligible for examination by the respective specialty and subspecialty Boards for certification. They will be equipped to begin careers of leadership in service, teaching, and administration, particularly in public sector child and adolescent psychiatry. Upon completion of the program, the fellows are expected to exhibit the core competencies of patient care, medical knowledge, interpersonal and communication skills, practice-based learning and improvement, professionalism, and systems-based practice.

Specifically, upon graduation our fellows should be able to:

• Understand normal child and adolescent development and have developed the skill to differentiate normal from abnormal development

• Conduct a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation that takes into consideration biological, psychological, behavioral and socio-cultural dimensions of children, adolescents, and families

• Demonstrate both diagnostic and treatment planning skills

• Be comfortable evaluating and treating a broad spectrum of psychopathology, including neurologic and other organic disorders, mental retardation, developmental disabilities, learning disorder, the full range of DSM-IV Axis I and Axis II conditions including but not limited to substance use and alcohol disorders and psychosomatic disorders

• Recognize and manage acute crises, including suicidal and homicidal behavior. Feel comfortable and competent functioning as a part of a multidisciplinary evaluation and treatment team that includes pediatricians and other medical specialists, clinical psychologists, social workers, nurses, speech and language therapists, audiologists, teachers, and representatives of community and social service agencies

• Provide the major treatment modalities, including long-term and time-limited individual psychotherapy, psychodynamic psychotherapy, play therapy, supportive therapy, family therapy, pharmacotherapy, crisis intervention, cognitive behavior therapy, and combined psychotherapy and psychopharmacology. The fellow should be able to carry out these treatments in a wide range of settings, including outpatient clinics, legal settings, schools, pediatric inpatient units and within a general hospital emergency department

• Work with patients and families in a longitudinal manner, addressing needs as they are identified, referring to other specialists or community resources as needed and terminating with patients as appropriate

• Target treatment modalities to a child’s diagnosis

• Function as a consultant to other medical and non-medical professionals in pediatric settings, courts, schools and a wide range of social and community health centers and agencies

• Teach trainees in other disciplines, parents and staff of community and social agencies

• Use research methodology and knowing how to critically evaluate the child mental health literature