Montefiore Einstein Postdoctoral Residency Program in Health Service 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.