Psychology Postdoctoral Residency Program

The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine was pleased to launch a new Postdoctoral Residency Program in Health Service Psychology that began with four fellows in 2022-23 academic year, and then expanded to five fellows for the 2023-24 academic year.

The Postdoctoral Residency Program at Montefiore/Einstein is a one-year, full-time program, offering postdoctoral fellows the opportunity to focus on one of six specializations within health service psychology during their training year:

1. Addiction Psychology

The Addiction Psychology post-doctoral residency will span Montefiore’s extensive network of addiction treatment programs to provide training and experience in the assessment and treatment of substance use disorders. With a focus on harm reduction and patient centered-care, the Resident will support Montefiore’s Substance Abuse Treatment Program (SATP) and Wakefield Recovery Center (WRC), which together provide care to over 1,200 individuals with substance use disorders throughout the Bronx.

These programs include Opioid Treatment Programs and Intensive Outpatient Programs, offering integrated counseling, addiction medicine, primary care, and psychiatric services to a racially, ethnically, and socially diverse population. The Resident will work closely with our dedicated team of addiction professionals to assist patients in developing the skills they need to reach their recovery goals. Our addiction treatment programs offer evidence-based care, integrating addiction medications such as methadone and buprenorphine, with empirically-supported behavioral interventions.

The Resident will receive training and experience in harm reduction approaches and group and individual therapy utilizing Motivational Interviewing, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for substance use and relapse prevention, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT). The Resident will also learn to conduct comprehensive substance use-focused evaluations and risk assessments.

Opportunities exist for research, program development and supported supervision of clinical psychology externs. Residents will spend approximately 60% of their time in the provision of direct clinical care and will engage in weekly individual and group supervision as well as weekly educational lectures.

2. Ambulatory Consults Urgent Treatment & Evaluations (ACUTE)/CL Psychiatry

This is a one-year post-doctoral fellowship that will work within the intersections of Emergency Psychiatry, Consultation & Liaison, and Ambulatory Mental Health at Montefiore Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Montefiore Medical Center’s ACUTE (Ambulatory Consults, Urgent Treatment and Evaluations) Psychiatry program is a service that provides urgent, expedited, and short-term service needs for patients seeking mental health services.

The ACUTE Psychiatry program incorporates four treatment pathways that include the following: bridge care, specialty ambulatory consultation, brief treatment, and urgent care. The fellow will hone clinical expertise in the domains of inpatient medical consultation & liaison, pre-surgical readiness evaluations, integration of complex mental health and medical concerns, and brief crisis intervention/assessment. The fellow will also work in conjunction with ACUTE Psychiatric leadership to create a data-driven ambulatory triage process from the Emergency Department to optimize hospital resources and improve patient care. They will work on quality initiatives related to the integration of telepsychiatry into both emergency department and outpatient services.

These services also provide opportunities to learn alongside medical students and residents., while working collaboratively on a psychiatric multidisciplinary team and other medical services within the hospital. These roles provide a unique experience delivering care at all levels of need in a vast array of different contexts and settings that only a large metropolitan healthcare system can provide.

3. Eating Disorders Program at Montefiore (EDPM)/Adolescent Dialectical Behavior Therapy (A-DBT)

The Adolescent DBT Program at the Montefiore Moses COPD (A-DBT) serves adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18, and their caregiver(s). Dialectical Behavior Therapy is the gold-standard evidence-based treatment for adolescents exhibiting signs of emerging borderline personality disorder, which may include struggling with difficult-to-control emotions, impulsivity, and family conflict, as well as high-risk behaviors including suicide and non-suicidal self-injury. DBT is also an effective treatment for depression and posttraumatic stress disorder.

The A-DBT Program at the Moses COPD is an adherent DBT program and includes multiple treatment components: weekly individual DBT therapy, access to 24/7 phone coaching via pager access, a weekly multifamily DBT skills group. In addition, all DBT clinicians participate in a weekly DBT consultation team. The Eating Disorders Program at Montefiore (EDPM) is a multidisciplinary specialty program across the Moses Child Outpatient Psychiatry Division (COPD) and the Department of Adolescent Medicine at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore (CHAM). The EDPM is an innovative program that was created to provide evidence-based treatment based for low-income patients with eating disorders. We provide consultation and brief intervention to adolescents and their families who are hospitalized due to need for medical stabilization of eating disorder, as well as family-based treatment (FBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT-E) for adolescents and their families seeking outpatient treatment. We closely collaborate with adolescent medicine to provide comprehensive and effective care.

Committed to health equity, we are the only program in New York City that offers specialized outpatient treatment for eating disorders to children and adolescents on public insurance. The postdoctoral fellow will treat individual cases in the EDPM program, consult on cases in the inpatient medical stabilization program at CHAM, and provide individual treatment in the A-DBT program, as well as the combined DBT-EDPM program. The fellow may also co-facilitate groups. Postdoctoral fellows will participate in inpatient hospital rounds, weekly DBT-EDPM supervision, DBT Consultation Team, monthly EDPM multi-disciplinary case consultation, and weekly EDPM rounds.

There are opportunities for program development, research, and peer supervision and consultation. The postdoctoral fellow will provide evidence-based assessment and treatment of children, adolescents, and families presenting to the Moses COPD or CHAM with eating disorders or other psychiatric/high-risk behaviors.

4. Psychosomatic Medicine

The Psychosomatic Medicine postdoctoral residency program encompasses training experiences across a variety of inpatient and outpatient medical services.

The fellow will work alongside three licensed psychologists and a psychiatrist embedded within the Montefiore Einstein Center for Transplantation, where they will provide inpatient and outpatient psychotherapy and pre-surgical psychological assessments to transplant patients, transplant candidates, and living kidney/liver donors. They also rotate with the Center for Positive Living/OVAL center, providing therapy as a part of a multidisciplinary team supporting individuals living with HIV/AIDS and sexual wellness services. The fellow will work with the Consultation Liaison Psychiatry team to provide bedside therapy and assessment of medical inpatients throughout the hospital. Each rotation will last the duration of the training year.

Research and program development experiences are welcome across all of the rotations. A minimum of 1 hour of individual and 1 hour of group supervision will be available.

5. Trauma Healing and Resilience in Vulnerable Environments (THRIVE)

The THRIVE clinical program is a transdiagnostic, specialty program that offers principle driven, flexibly delivered, evidence-based psychotherapy for patients ages 18-64 seeking treatment for trauma related distress, inclusive of PTSD, Complex PTSD, racism-related stress and trauma, and trauma related to marginalization based on gender expression.

The fellow will receive training in and have opportunities to utilize several evidence-based therapies for trauma including Skills Training for Affective and Interpersonal Regulation (STAIR), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Written Exposure Therapy (WET), and Prolonged Exposure (PE). Additional opportunities exist for exposure to mindfulness-based interventions for trauma and Trauma Sensitive Yoga.

THRIVE is also dedicated to providing gender affirming care to transgender and gender diverse patients that are at high-risk for trauma exposure and face systemic challenges accessing gender affirming and evidence-based psychotherapy. The fellow will conduct pre-surgical evaluations for individuals seeking gender affirming surgery, and offer gender affirming, trauma-informed therapy for those interested. The fellow will also co-lead psychotherapy groups within the THRIVE program.

Our program is committed to excellence in training postdoctoral fellows interested in social justice, cultural humility, developing therapeutic skills to effectively disseminate evidence-based trauma treatments in a principle driven, flexible manner, as well as serving a racially, ethnically, and socially diverse population many of whom might have extensive trauma histories and complex psychosocial needs.

This fellowship will follow a scientist-practitioner model, providing a balance of clinical, training, and research activities. The fellow will receive weekly individual and group supervision on clinical interventions and a research project/program development. There will also be opportunities for developing supervisory and teaching skills. Fellows will spend approximately 60% of their time in the provision of direct clinical service, with the remaining time comprised of administration, research, training, and supervision.

6. Women’s Mental Health

This is a one-year post-doctoral fellowship that will work within the intersections of Women’s Mental Health, Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, and Ambulatory Mental Health at Montefiore Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Montefiore Medical Center’s Division of Women’s Mental Health offers targeted mental healthcare to patients across the female reproductive lifecycle with an emphasis on the perinatal period which confers increased risk for incident and recurrent psychiatric illness. The Women’s Mental Health postdoctoral fellow will also learn to provide evidenced-based care to women experiencing psychiatric disorders exacerbated by menses (e.g., Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder and Major Depression), those experiencing fertility concerns, and those in the menopausal transition experiencing mood symptoms.

The Women’s Mental Health postdoctoral fellowship provides the fellow with the opportunity to become an integral member of multidisciplinary teams across the Moses and Weiler campuses at Montefiore. The fellow will receive training in delivering evidence-based treatment and conducting brief assessments with female patients navigating complex reproductive mood and trauma-related presentations. The fellow will also gain experience co-facilitating a perinatal bereavement support group in the outpatient clinic. The fellow will work directly with the Division of Women’s Mental Health leadership to develop a data-driven triage process for post-ICU and fourth trimester patients to help increase access to expedited, yet quality perinatal mental health services.

Over the course of the year, the fellow will attend a track-specific lecture series and acquire certification as a perinatal mental health specialist. The fellow will also continue to cultivate clinical expertise on the multidisciplinary inpatient medical Consultation & Liaison teams at both campuses (i.e., providing brief bedside psychotherapeutic interventions, differential diagnoses, rapid disposition, etc.). In addition, the fellow will work collaboratively with the Ambulatory Consults Urgent Treatment & Evaluations (ACUTE) team to offer short-term therapeutic interventions to patients seeking bridge care services. The fellow will further engage in program development, research initiatives, and the supervision of pre-doctoral interns/medical students to enhance their training experience.

This Women’s Mental Health postdoctoral fellowship allows early career professionals to acquire specialized training in health psychology and women’s mental health at a major academic medical center while also offering culturally responsive clinical care to patients during a medically and psychologically vulnerable time in their lives. Completing a post-doctoral fellowship at Montefiore Medical Center provides a unique opportunity to consider the multitude of intersectional factors and systemic barriers to equitable care impacting the mental health of patients from historically marginalized communities.

Goal

Across all six specializations, the Postdoctoral Residency Program at Montefiore/Einstein is committed to providing a comprehensive training experience that will facilitate each postdoctoral fellow’s growth and development as an independent, early-career professional psychologist. As such, a primary goal of the Postdoctoral Residency Program at Montefiore/Einstein is to assist each postdoctoral fellow in strengthening, consolidating, and integrating their clinical and professional skills into their professional identity as an independent, early-career professional psychologist, so that they will be able to function autonomously by the end of their training year.

In service of this goal, postdoctoral fellows will provide 20-24 hours of clinical service per week, receive 1 hour of individual supervision, 1 hour of dyadic or group supervision, and participate on weekly multidisciplinary teams. In addition, postdoctoral fellows will have the equivalent of a full day per week dedicated to didactic activities, including lectures, case conferences, community service, lecturing to psychology interns, Departmental Grand Rounds, a meeting with each specialization leader (monthly), a mentorship meeting with the psychology interns (monthly), and a Division meeting with interns, postdocs, and faculty (monthly). Postdoctoral fellows will also be allotted 3 hours per week to participate in a scholarly project/apprenticeship involving either research or program planning, implementation, and evaluation, with 1 hour of supervision for this project. Research/apprenticeship offerings are subject to change given the needs of the hospital and community, as well as availability of supervisors.