Community Psychiatry Training Program Curriculum

The Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Community Fellowship Track is part of our larger Community Psychiatry Program. For more information about training opportunities, community partners, and other perks specific to the community track, visit the Community Psychiatry Training page.

Community Psychiatry Didactics Program

Our Community Psychiatry Didactics Program is a cornerstone of the Community Track Fellowship. As a supplement to the core psychiatric education provided by the traditional track fellowship, Community Track Fellows receive an additional protected academic half-day per week designed to equip them to emerge as clinician-leaders in public-sector psychiatry.

Our didactics are rooted in the following key principles:

Psychiatric care, at its best, is person-centered, recovery-oriented, systems-based, structurally-competent, and evidence-based.
Advocacy at all levels is an essential practice for clinician-leaders who seek to advance equity for patients and families who receive care in community-based settings.
Collaborative partnership and team-based approaches are of vital importance in ensuring that mental health services appropriately meet the needs of the communities we serve. Our didactics program is attended by learners, staff, and faculty from a diverse set of disciplines including medicine, nursing, psychology, clinical counseling, and research, and we are also fortunate to have guest lecturers from community-based organizations and varied professional backgrounds. We affectionately refer to our blended learning community as "The Village."

Curriculum

Lecture seminars, journal club discussion, and group case discussions comprise the weekly components of the community psychiatry didactics half-day. Interspersed throughout the curriculum are non-graded group projects, individual presentations, and field trip opportunities to community-based mental health programs; these provide opportunities for more hands-on learning related to the themes and subjects explored in our main curriculum.

Lecture Modules

The program's weekly lecture series progresses through five curricular modules as follows:

The History of Community Psychiatry and Structure of Public Mental Health Module explores how public mental health ecosystems in the United States and in California have come about through their historical underpinnings, the evolution of funding mechanisms, and service delivery innovation.

The Recovery Oriented Services, Evidence Based Practices, and Integrated Care Models Module endeavors to define and advance our understanding of our roles as psychiatric providers seeking to practice recovery-oriented and systems-based care, working in collaboration with the diverse network of psychosocial and integrated mental health care services available in our community.

The Mental Health Equity, Advocacy, and Policy Module builds a foundational understanding of how policy, social determinants, and culture impact community health. Learning from one another's experience, we expand our skills in advocacy while hoping to further develop our unique voices and roles as we advocate for equity and justice in mental health care.

The Program Leadership and Management Module dives deep into how mental health programs and organizations are developed, structured, and financed, so that trainees can prepare to take on leadership opportunities in the next stages of their careers.

The Systems of Care and Special Populations Module provides an overview of how specialized systems—such as those wherein care is provided to children, people in crisis, and individuals involved in the criminal-legal system—interact to create a continuum of mental health services in the community. We also direct attention to how psychiatric care can be optimized for specific populations, such as migrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, people living in rural communities, victims/survivors of trafficking, and those with perinatal mental health conditions.

Journal Club

The themes listed above are explored in more detail through weekly interactive journal club discussions. During journal club, community psychiatry faculty and trainees act as both learners and facilitators as we review articles ranging from key trials of community psychiatry interventions to landmark reviews of mental health services delivery research.

Certification Eligibility

The UC San Diego Community Track Psychiatry Residency is ACGME-accredited, and graduated Community Track Fellows will be eligible for board certification in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

The Community Track Fellowship is also approved by the American Association for Community Psychiatry (AACP), which administers an additional Certification in Community and Public Psychiatry. Every topic, journal article, and book chapter covered on the AACP Certification Exam is referenced during our two-year Community Psychiatry Didactics Program. Graduating fellows are encouraged to obtain this certification, and if they elect to take the examination in May or June of their CAP2 year, the program will cover the cost of the exam.

Resources

Trainees will be provided access to textbooks, articles, and other learning materials to supplement their learning as they journey through the curriculum. Foundational texts include:

Bodenheimer, T., Grumbach, K., & Willard-Grace, R. (Eds.). (2024). Understanding health policy: A clinical approach. McGraw Hill.
Koh, H. K., Mejia, G. G., Gould, H. M. (Eds.). (2022). Diversity in Action: Case Studies in Cultural Psychiatry. Springer.
Sowers, W. E., McQuistion, H. L., Ranz, J. M., Feldman, J. M., & Runnels, P. S. (Eds.). (2022). Textbook of Community Psychiatry. Springer.