Why U-M Psychiatry?
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| Gregory Dalack, M.D. Associate Professor Interim Chair and Associate Chair for Education and Academic Affairs Department of Psychiatry |
In your four years of medical school you have found, I'm sure, that your greatest resource has not been the scores of texts or lectures that you have had to absorb. It's been your mind.
Your ability to analyze, scrutinize, criticize the power to sift through the barrage of information and assess its importance is your true strength. This is what took you to the top of your class in college and again in medical school. It's also what will be crucial to you in your psychiatry residency at the University of Michigan. Our job is to train you to be psychiatrists, of course, but also to be critical thinkers. This is a tremendous opportunity for you to learn and grow in many areas.
Laying the foundation
Our first responsibility is to lay the groundwork for you by providing strong models on which you can build. In your residency we describe the strong interface between medicine and psychiatry so that you have a clear understanding of how one affects the other. A person's heart condition, for example, can cause stress and anxiety. These symptoms, in turn, can make the heart condition worse. All of this may result in depression or other problems. We explore such issues so that you understand this important interplay.
Designing a framework
While there is some debate over the role of psychotherapy in residency training, we at the University of Michigan will continue the strong tradition of this approach. Psycho-therapy will always be a framework and therapeutic tool that is prominent in a psychiatrist's practice. We teach the method in both a clinical and didactic fashion alongside our very strong biologic curriculum. We also selectively choose clinical training sites and material so that residents get a diverse group of patients, teachers and settings in which to gain experience.
The bricks and mortar
We are only able to build to continue to expand upon ongoing research that offers us new ways to tackle a question that is important to us. With mentoring, supervision, curriculum and patient care, we help residents understand, review, critique and perhaps design a research project for presentation.
Sharing a blueprint
Our residents are responsible not only for their own growth but for the growth of others around them. They must take what they've learned and become teachers to non-psychiatrists, medical students, nurses, patients and other residents. Our goal is to make you better teachers so that you are sharing your blueprint for success.
Architects of the future
The best part of the program is that it is uniquely tailored to meet each resident's particular skills, needs and potential. Our residents are the same in only one way they all were among the best medical students in the country. From there, they are incredibly diverse. They come to the program with their own ideas and interests in psychiatry. Some choose to go on to the fine fellowship programs we have in psychopharmacology, geriatrics, substance abuse, research, consultation/liaison, forensics, mood and anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, or child and adolescent psychiatry. Others are interested in community mental health. Still others want a big-city practice. Some are attracted to the University of Michigan in part because of the excellent family life Ann Arbor offers, with its parks, concerts, sporting events and other activities. It has the feel of a small town, but with the opportunities of a large city.
Your reason for choosing the University of Michigan probably includes a bit of all of these elements. Each is essential to a rewarding residency program. But most importantly, the University of Michigan offers you the ability to be an individual to set your own objectives and reach your own goals. At the University of Michigan, you are truly able to be the architect of your own future.