Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Residency Program
The Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Michigan Health System has long been recognized as one of the nation’s foremost programs for training leaders in the field. Its rigorous yet flexible course of training produces clinicians with outstanding skills in diagnostic assessment, traditional psychotherapies, empirically-based psychotherapies, somatic treatment, and consultation. The Division also enthusiastcally supports residents interested in academic careers, research, and medical education, through faculty actively engaged in diverse research and scholarly activities. Child psychiatry residents may enroll in a research training track that merges research and clinical training.
Who Should Consider Training in Child/Adolescent Psychiatry?
Child psychiatry training is valuable not only for physicians who have decided upon a career working with children, but also for psychiatrists who demand a fuller appreciation of behavior and psychopathology from longitudinal and developmental perspectives. Many important psychiatric disorders, included behavior disorders and pervasive developmental disorders, mental retardation, learning disabilities, and Tourette’s syndrome, to mention only a few, begin, by definition, in youth. Other disorders commonly viewed as the domain of adult psychiatry, including schizophrenia and manic-depressive disorder, typically crystallize in adolescence or early adulthood, with early signs sometimes evident in infancy. Psychosocial adversity in early life reverberates through the lifespan, and most theories of personality development and disorder emphasize early developmental influences and predispositions.
For these reasons, child psychiatrists offer unique perspectives on psychopathology across the life cycle. Furthermore, as psychiatry seeks a niche as a primary care specialty, the capacity to treat whole families spanning several generations of psychopathology will become increasingly valuable.
In practice, many adult psychiatrists treat adolescents. Those with certificates of training or board certification in child/adolescent psychiatry have a wider range of employment options, and salaried child psychiatrists frequently earn a premium. Child psychiatry is consistently among the most sought after specialties in medicine.