We are very pleased that you are seeking information about our residency education programs in psychiatry. We provide information about our Psychiatry Residency Program here. Our Triple Board Program, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Residency, and other Mount Sinai fellowships have their own internet information sites, and you can learn more about them under the Programs and Services link above.

Psychiatry is the most interesting and challenging specialty in medicine. We care for those who otherwise would lead lives of agony, with risk of exclusion, isolation and suicide. These illnesses result from complex pathways involving genetic predisposition, the development of mind, cognitive-behavioral traits, and interactions with the multifaceted social and material environment. We now have potent treatments that are constantly being refined in a context of discovery and evolution of new treatments. Our psychotherapies, pharmacotherapies and other biological treatments can literally give life back to our patients. Since our focus is the inner, subjective experience – thoughts, emotions, hopes, memories and self-reflections – we are privileged to know our patients in ways that lead to a deep and fulfilling sense of connection.

We also regard psychiatric education as a great challenge and responsibility. We want to prepare you to understand and treat the many different conditions that are grouped as Mental Disorders. Some might differentiate them from medical disorder. At Mount Sinai, we do not. We aim to teach residents to carefully arrive at diagnoses by closely observing patients, learning about their subjective experience via establishing rapport, and interviewing in ways that help patients reveal their often painful inner lives. We want residents to know how behavior and mental events are linked to that amazing organ – the brain. We have a wonderful partner in the field of neuroscience which is now focused on studying the higher cognitive functions (memories, emotions, decision making) that are dysregulated in our patients. We now have the capability to directly measure brain structure and function in patients both when they are ill and well. We can begin to construct theories of how vulnerabilities develop and how life events and our treatments can interact in protective as well as adverse ways.

At Mount Sinai we are very aware that our program has an ulterior as well as an educational responsibility: To prepare you for a career. We want all residents to gain the knowledge base and clinical skills to practice clinical psychiatry, but we aim for more than that. As in your university studies, we will encourage you to find an area of concentration. We aim for you to graduate with a valid sense of expertise that will merit you a position of distinction when you go on to further training, clinical practice, research or a teaching / administrative position.

The Department of Psychiatry's training programs are located at two centers, The Mount Sinai Medical Center and the Bronx Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The two locations provide for experiences with literally all psychiatric disorders, and with all socioeconomic and ethnic / racial groups. This includes important work with returning veterans of the Iraq conflict. Our research programs are similarly broad-based and open to resident participation. Our department is recognized internationally for its groundbreaking achievements in psychiatric discoveries, and these research faculty members provide expert didactic teaching and new clinical treatments. At the same time, our formalized affiliation with the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute – the largest and oldest psychoanalytic organization in the United States – and our commitment to psychotherapy training allows us to offer in depth training in the psychotherapies.

We strive to provide an open, stimulating and supportive environment for our residents. Residency education involves hard work, but there is joy and excitement in becoming a psychiatrist. We aim for these years to be happy as well as productive ones.

We look forward to meeting with you in person to share our enthusiasm for the Residency Program in Psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

While the Hospital's psychiatric case records date back to 1852 when the first Jewish immigrants with mental illness were admitted to the Hospital, the real story of the Department of Psychiatry begins 40 years later. In 1893, a young immigrant named Dr. Bernard Sachs was asked to consult on a few cases. Sachs had trained in Vienna and was among the first doctors to share the intriguing new theories of his friend, Dr. Sigmund Freud, with his American colleagues. Sachs was best known for helping describe Tay-Sachs disease, but his family fortune (his brother founded the Goldman-Sachs investment company) allowed for the construction of the Hospital's first neurology wing, boasting 20 beds, at the turn of the century.

Three years later, the Hospital opened the first private outpatient psychiatric clinic in the city. The director was psychoanalyst Dr. Clarence P. Obendorf, one of the founders of the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute. Obendorf had trained at Manhattan Psychiatric Hospital, and his mentor, Dr. A. A. Brill, had been among the few who had traveled to hear Sigmund Freud lecture at Clark University in 1909.

Sachs' 20-bed neurology ward treated only an occasional psychiatric patient (many such patients were still being sent either to jail or to state asylums). However, the next neurology chair changed the patient mix. In 1920, Dr. Israel Strauss joined the staff with plans to create a facility for patients with mental illness. He did so, but he located the hospital outside of Manhattan - first in Westchester County, and later in Queens where it continues as the Hillside Hospital of Long Island Jewish Hospital.

Strauss passed the torch to Dr. Israel Wechsler, who decided to expand the role of psychiatry in the neurology department even further. Wechsler brought in Dr. Lawrence Kubie, an analyst trained at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, who had plans to use Mount Sinai as a blueprint for psychiatry in general medicine. Thus consultation-liaison psychiatry was born at Mount Sinai, with psychiatrists in the 1930s on the floors of the Hospital helping in the care of cancer and heart patients. Their assigned role was to help patients come to terms with their illnesses and strengthen the bonds with their doctors.

After World War II psychiatrists recognized the need for psychiatry to be separate from neurology in order to flourish as a profession. In 1945, with interest in psychiatry growing nationally, Dr. M. Ralph Kaufman arrived to chair the new Psychiatry Department. In addition to consultations on the medicine and surgical services, a ward for psychosomatics was opened to treat patients with such illnesses as asthma, headaches, and peptic ulcers.

Psychoanalytic theories and treatments were emphasized in the 1960s. However, the success of pharmacological treatments, especially for the most seriously ill, led to an interest in biological studies of psychiatric disorders. When Marvin Stein, M.D. became Chair in 1971, he fostered the research activities of the department, including the recruitment of Kenneth Davis, M.D., who led multi-disciplinary studies of schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease. In 1987, Dr. Kenneth Davis became Chair himself. His leadership ushered in a period of growth and expansion unparalleled in the Department's history. Space was upgraded, programs enlarged, and the full-time faculty grew to well over one hundred. Dr. Davis' guidance led to the creation of a multitude of internationally respected programs that continue to flourish in schizophrenia, personality disorders, autism, depression, alcohol dependence, attention deficit disorders, impulsive and compulsive disorders, stress disorders, geriatrics, memory disorders, and Alzheimer's disease. In addition, the Department became home to a variety of programs in such areas as molecular genetics, neuroimaging, community psychiatry, health services research, and psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy. Due to his outstanding accomplishments in the Department of Psychiatry, in 2003 Dr. Kenneth Davis was named President and CEO of The Mount Sinai Medical Center as well as Dean of Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

More recently, Jack Gorman, M.D. (2003) and then Eric Hollander, M.D. (2006) became Departmental Chairs. Under their leadership, the Department maintained and expanded programs in the many areas listed above. In addition, the Department developed an extensive and innovative program in mood and anxiety disorders research and added new substance abuse treatment programs, including Madison East - a high-quality, inpatient psychiatric amenities unit which is the only service of its kind in Manhattan. In child and adolescent psychiatry, the Department developed programs in eating disorders, health services research, and traumatic stress disorders. Drs. Davis, Gorman, and Hollander developed a formalized affiliation with the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and added core foundation programs in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). The Department expanded consultation and HIV psychiatry, adding new faculty and new grants. It has also expanded research in translational neuroscience and neuroimaging. Overall, the Department has opened up new opportunities for medical students and residents in clinical and research programs. The educational programs at Mount Sinai continue to attract the finest medical students, residents and fellows in psychiatry as evidenced by their frequent listing in the roster of national awards.