Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Residency Training Program

The Outpatient Psychiatry Service (OPS) at Children's Hospital Boston offers comprehensive assessment and treatment services to children and their families.

Using psychoeducational, cognitive, behavioral, dynamic and psychopharmacologic treatment approaches in individual, family and group modalities, the outpatient program provides solution-focused care specifically helping patients and their families to effectively manage their emotional and behavioral problems.

There are four distinct programs under this service:

1. Pediatric Psychopharmacology
2. Neuropsychology
3. Emergency Psychiatry
4. Psychosocial Treatment (PSTP). (The PSTP also includes several specialty teams: the Latino Clinic, Group Therapy Program, Mood Disorders Clinic and Medical Coping Clinic.)

The Pediatric Psychiatry Consultation Service at Children's Hospital Boston is one of the nation's leading and largest psychiatric consultations programs.

Staff and trainees provide diagnostic and treatment services to all in-house Children's medical and surgical wards.

Working closely with consultation attendings, our residents learn first hand about the critical collaborative interface between pediatrics and psychiatry, while gaining an understanding of systems interventions that are critical to all types of consultative work (for example: pediatrics and school settings), as well as a deeper understanding of the illness experiences of children and their families.

The Richmond Psychiatry Inpatient Service at Children's Hospital Boston is a 16-bed inpatient unit that specializes in caring for children, ages 8 to 18 years, who struggle with depression, psychosis, anxiety, eating disorders and other psychiatric illnesses.

This unit also has unique expertise in treating children with serious co-morbid medical illnesses such as brittle asthma and diabetes, which are often vehicles through which emotional and behavioral problems are expressed.

Using an integrative focal treatment planning model, our residents learn how to identify in an effective, focused manner the problems that brought about a child's admission, and the implementation of targeted treatment approaches that allow a child to return to a less restrictive environment for ongoing care.

The Children's Hospital Neighborhood Partnerships (CHNP) at Children's Hospital Boston is an innovative community mental health program based in 16 schools, both public and private, and six community health centers throughout the Greater Boston area.

CHNP concentrates its efforts on those neighborhoods that have a high prevalence of risk factors, such as single parent households, families living in poverty, substandard housing and health concerns such as low birth weight.

The goal of CHNP is to spark systemic change in the provision of mental health services fourfold:

1. by expanding access to mental health services for underserved children
2. by providing mental health training for practitioners
3. by increasing knowledge of mental health disorders and building capacity in community-based partner organizations to prevent and address mental health concerns
4. by advocating for policy changes that support the creation of an effective mental health system

Major program components include:

• on-site mental health consultants in schools, community health centers and other community organizations
• case management services for families in schools that promote connections to community health centers and other community-based resources
• special assessments and services for children who have co-morbid medical, emotional, academic and behavioral issues
• larger-scale prevention programming to provide education and support to students, families and staff around concerns such as depression and suicide, bullying and sexuality