Inpatient and Outpatient Mood Disorders Postdoctoral Fellowship

The Inpatient & Outpatient Mood Disorders Postdoctoral Fellowship provides advanced clinical training in child psychology with an emphasis on mood disorders and acute short-term intervention. The fellowship is divided into two parts, with half of the time spent on our Child and Adolescent Inpatient Psychiatric Units and half the time in the Outpatient Mood and Trauma Disorders Program. In additional to direct clinical care, there is time dedicated for supervision, administrative time, and pursuing other clinical, research, and program development interests. As part of training, the fellow will also treat families as a part of our comprehensive outpatient Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) program providing individual therapy, phone coaching, co-leading multifamily DBT groups (optional), and participating in our multidisciplinary consultation team.

The Inpatient Psychiatry Units are two psychiatric units for children and adolescents ages 5-17 who are deemed a danger to themselves or others for self-injury, suicidal behavior, severe aggression, psychosis or difficulties with emotional and behavioral dysregulation. The average length of stay for patients is between 5-7 days. As part of the inpatient portion of the fellowship, the fellow will work closely with a multidisciplinary team (nursing, psychiatry, child life, expressive therapy, child psychiatric specialists and social work) and provide individual and group therapy services.

The Mood and Trauma Disorders Program provides outpatient services to children and adolescents with mood disorders (e.g. major depression, pediatric bipolar disorder, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder), and their families. Fellows will gain experience in assessment and treatment of mood disorders through individual, family and group therapy (optional). Additional fellowship opportunities include working with children with medical illnesses and trauma.

Our hospital serves a diverse population in the Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia area. The fellow will be able to participate in team meetings, collaborate with our psychiatry counterparts and potentially gain supervision experience with psychology externs. The fellow will also have opportunities to gain clinical and/or research exposure in other areas of general child clinical or pediatric psychology, if interested. Didactics are an important component of the fellowship program and will focus on topics related to DBT, mood disorders, anxiety, general clinical child psychology and professional development.