RESEARCH TRAINING IN CHILD PSYCHIATRY
Eligibility
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Training
History •
Program
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Columbia Child
Psychiatry Advanced Center for Intervention and Services Research
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Clinical Access
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Training
Faculty
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Length
of Training
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Salaries
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Stipend
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Selection of Fellows
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Application
Procedures
Ten NIMH-funded fellowships are available for research training in Child Psychiatry.
Psychiatrists who have completed at least one year of child fellowship training and Ph.D.’s who have already undertaken research training in appropriate fields (usually child development or an aspect of biological psychopathology) are eligible for admission to the program. In exceptional cases, applicants with no prior experience or training with children or adolescents will be considered for admission, but they are expected to have a clear commitment to child psychopathological research.
- - - Training History back to top of page
The training program started in 1980 with 4 post-doctoral stipends, increased to 5 in 1988, to 8 in 1990, to 9 in 1995, and to 10 in 2000. The training program has been productive. Of the 40 fellows trained over the past 10 years, 10 have received NIH Career Development Awards, 1 has received a W. T. Grant Foundation Scholar’s Award and 21 have received substantial project grant support from the NIH or from foundations. Four of the 10 Research Scientist Development Awards were received during the current funding period. In sum, three-quarters of those who have continued in the fellowship program for longer than a year have succeeded in receiving support for a continuing research career.
- - - Program back to top of page
The essential elements of the training program are:
• Establishing a relationship with a well-informed, productive mentor who can act as a role model for a successful investigator. All mentors, with the exception of a small number who provide technical and methodological assistance are themselves principal investigators of peer-reviewed, externally funded grants.
• The second central element of the training program is that, for a limited period of time, fellows work alongside either their mentor or another chosen investigator to learn first-hand about the management of a research team, techniques of quality control, data reduction and management, etc.
• Fellows conduct at least one literature review that can serve as a basis for placing their own research interests into context, that can assist them in preparing grant and other applications, and, on some occasions, serve as a paper suitable for publication.
• Perhaps most importantly, fellows are supervised in undertaking their own research project, starting with conceptualization, discussion of alternative methodologies, resolution of feasibility, determining power requirements, etc., making a case to the IRB, dealing with IRB suggestions, preparing a proposal—usually for a small internal grant—and, finally, the execution of a project that falls within the time and resources available to the research fellow.
Fellows generally start their training period in July and spend several months participating in their preceptors project meetings, undertaking focused literature reviews, and collecting data for a project directed by their preceptor. As the fellow becomes more experienced in appropriate research methods and identifies research questions that are of interest, a research plan will be drawn up for the fellow’s own project. An appropriate project will be one that is feasible, within the level of funding that has been historically available for research fellows, and that can be carried out in an accessible site and within the time span available to the fellow. There are no restrictions on which department should be used for conducting the project, and different fellows have worked in epidemiology, pediatrics, psychology, and family genetics. Some projects have been conducted in the field, others at New York Presbyterian Hospital, others among outpatients recruited through advertising and studied at Psychiatric Institute, and yet others among patients seen at other hospitals.
The general expectation is that this phase will be reached within six months of the start of training. At this point the fellow will prepare written protocols to submit to the IRB and will seek funding support from one of several sources.
- - - Columbia Child Psychiatry Advanced Center for Intervention and Services Research (ACISR)
Funded by NIMH, the ACISR is designed to promote and develop efficacy studies in child and adolescent psychiatric disorders. A central goal is to assist research fellows. ACISR provides support for biostatistics and data analysis, clinical assessment, and sample recruitment. It also provides pilot funds for preliminary and feasibility projects by research fellows. The center is organized around four core units: Principle Research, Operations, Research Network Development and Research Methods. Click here for more information on ACISR.
- - - Clinical Access back to top of page
All medically qualified trainees receive a hospital appointment and are introduced to the clinic director. This past year, we successfully lobbied for a change in the policy that extended this benefit to licensed psychologists. If a project requires access to a clinical sample it is implemented through the Clinical Core of the CHILD IRC (see above) and also from the community through advertisements, etc. The IRC Clinical Core also provides after-care support at no charge to the patient once the protocol has been completed.
- - - Training Faculty back to top of page
David Shaffer, M.D., a child psychiatrist, is chief of the Division of Child Psychiatry at NYSPI-CUMC, and has been training director of the Child Psychiatry Research Fellowship Program since its inception.
Since coming to the United States in 1977, Dr. Shaffer has been principal investigator on approximately 33 externally funded, peer-reviewed research projects that have examined the cognitive and behavioral sequelae of head injuries in children, the psychiatric specifications of abnormal motor signs, the preparation and adaptation of a structured diagnostic interview (the NIMH DISC), the psychiatric epidemiology of youth suicide, the biology of attempted suicide, the natural history of suicide attempts, and the efficacy of different approaches to suicide prevention. He is currently principal investigator of the NIMH Child Psychiatry Intervention Research Center and six other grant-funded research projects. He is co-chair of the APA DSM-V Workgroup on Externalizing Disorders in Childhood and a member of the National Expert Panel in the National Institute of Mental Health Partnership Program. He was co-chairman of the Child Psychiatry Working Group for DSM-IV, past president of the Society for Research in Psychopathology, chairman of the NIMH-DISC Editorial Board, and president of the American Foundation for the Prevention of Suicide.
Associate Directors
Madelyn Gould, Ph.D., M.P.H., has been an epidemiologist in the Divisions of Child Psychiatry and Epidemiology for over two decades. Her long-standing research interests include the epidemiology and social psychology of youth suicide, as well as the evaluation of youth suicide prevention interventions. Dr. Gould is an internationally recognized authority on the role of suicide contagion. Her ongoing NIMH– and CDC–supported work on suicide clusters, as well as her research projects on crisis intervention strategies following a suicide and evaluation of interventions to prevent suicide, specifically crisis hot lines and screening programs, have provided opportunities for trainees to collaborate and develop their own research projects. Dr. Gould routinely consults with trainees on the assessment of suicidal ideation and behavior and on research design. Past trainees have incorporated their measures into her ongoing school projects, laying the groundwork for their proposed K Award applications. A member of the Institutional Review Board at NYSPI for nearly a decade, she routinely consults with trainees on their applications to the IRB and provides seminars on ethical concerns in conducting child psychiatric research.
Laurence Greenhill, M.D., is director of the Psychopharmacology Core for the NIMH Child Psychiatry Intervention Research Center at Columbia University. Dr. Greenhill has had over two decades of experience in the development of pediatric psychopharmacology randomized controlled trials, including pharmacotherapy alone, in comparison, or in combination with behavior therapy; in pharmacokinetic trials; and in manual development. Dr. Greenhill is an internationally recognized authority on the clinical use of psychostimulant medications. His therapeutic research has encompassed psychosocial and psychopharmacological approaches and has included a variety of childhood disorders, including ADHD, conduct disorders, major depressive disorder, suicidal behavior, and anxiety disorders.
Peter Jensen, M.D., is formerly the associate director for child and adolescent research at NIMH. Since coming to Columbia in 1999, Dr. Jensen has mentored two post-doctoral research fellows. The two T32 research fellows have set career research goals to explore areas of optimal methods for screening and assessing youth in primary care settings, studying physician decision-making, and examining the best methods for encourage parents and providers to adopt evidence-based treatments. These two have also been exceptionally productive, producing four peer-reviewed papers and three in progress, four grant applications, and two successfully funded grants.
Mark Olfson, M.D., M.P.H., is a psychiatrist and mental-health services researcher who is characterizing the pattern and effectiveness of mental health services in community settings. His research is currently supported by federal, private non-profit, and private proprietary sources. During the past four years, Dr. Olfson has mentored three American Psychiatric Association Van Ameringen research fellows, two NARSAD fellows, one fellow in the NIMH Psychiatric Epidemiology Training Program, two NIMH K Awardees, and four other T32 awardees. Current opportunities for child research trainees under Dr. Olfson include a study of mental health services provided by universities and colleges in New York State (MacArthur Foundation), industry-sponsored studies of stimulant use in ADHD, and foundation-sponsored studies of the treatment of suicidal youth.
Bradley Peterson, M.D., was recruited to our department in July of 2001. He directs Pediatric Neuropsychiatry and MRI Research in the Department of Psychiatry. His work includes the development of functional MRI paradigms, with a primary interest in the study of attention, impulse control, and top-down information processing in the central nervous system. His anatomical studies have focused on the correlates of regional brain morphologies with cognitive, behavioral, and emotional processes across human development. He has extensive experience in mentoring students and postdoctoral fellows in research methodologies, having mentored a dozen undergraduate and medical students in their senior theses and 11 postdoctoral fellows in three-year research fellowships. He has also mentored eight full-time junior faculty researchers and several junior clinical faculty members.
B. Timothy Walsh, M.D., established the Eating Disorders Research Unit in our department in 1979, and has been continuously funded since that time to conduct studies of the psychobiology and treatment of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder. He was chair of the Eating Disorders Workgroup of the DSM-IV taskforce, and is past president of the Academy for Eating Disorders. In recent years, Dr. Walsh has become increasingly involved in studies of children and adolescents. Dr. Walsh plays a prominent role in mentoring young investigators who are interested in eating disorders and in psychopharmacological research. Dr. Walsh’s Eating Disorders Research Unit provides opportunities for fellows in research on the treatment and psychobiology of eating disorders. Dr. Walsh also co-chaired the department’s IRB for nine years, and thereby acquired substantial expertise in the ethical issues surrounding research on children and adolescents.
Bruce Waslick, M.D., is currently a research psychiatrist in the Division of Child Psychiatry. His major areas of interest include research of the etiology and treatment of affective disorders in children and adolescents, as well as psychopharmacology. Dr. Waslick also has been involved in studies examining the biological correlates of depression and suicidal behavior in adolescents, as well as pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies of medications commonly used in the treatment of disruptive behavior disorders of children. Research opportunities with Dr. Waslick exist for fellows with interests in etiology and treatment (pharmacological or psychosocial) of child and adolescent affective and anxiety disorders, as well as fellows with interests in understanding the etiology of, or developing clinical interventions for, adolescents with histories of suicidal ideation or behavior.
Myrna Weissman, Ph.D., a psychiatric epidemiologist, is director of the Division of Clinical and Genetic Epidemiology. Her studies of the children of depressed parents led to her interest in the early treatment of children and adolescents at high risk for psychiatric disorders. She has worked with numerous fellows at every level and is currently supervising postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and child psychiatrists and integrating her findings from risk-factors research into treatment studies, e.g., she heads a multi-centered study to determine the effects of successful treatment of depressed mothers on their children. She is supervising the modification of IPT for prepubertal depressed children from high-risk families.
Training Faculty back to top of page
Anne Marie Albano, Ph.D., A.B.P.P., is a clinical psychologist and researcher who is actively engaged in clinical trials and psychopathology research in the area of anxiety and depression in youth. She is a principal investigator for the Treatments of Adolescents with Depression Study (TADS) and the Child/Adolescent Anxiety Multimodal Treatment Study (CAMS), two large randomized trials sponsored by the NIMH. During the past three years, Dr. Albano mentored four postdoctoral fellows in clinical psychology and three psychologists with K Awards. Dr. Albano offers research and training opportunities through the TADS and CAMS trials as add-on and secondary data analytic studies. In addition, her research with the Panic Disorder Severity Scale for Adolescents and the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for Children will provide large data sets for studies of the classification and diagnosis of internalizing disorders in youth.
Ravi Bansal, Ph.D.: Dr. Bansal’s primary research interest is in the design and development of algorithms for the analysis and understanding of medical images with minimal human interaction. In particular, he is interested in automated shape analysis of brain structures segmented from anatomical magnetic resonance images for studying neurodevelopmental correlates of the human brain in diseases such as depression. Additionally, he is conducting research in mathematical and statistical models for the analysis of diffusion tensor images, white matter fiber tracking and registration, detection of signal in functional magnetic resonance images, and non-rigid warpings of images for intensity non-uniformity correction and registration. He is currently helping to mentor three postdoctoral research trainees in the analysis of MRI images.
Hector R. Bird, M.D. was the principal investigator of the NIMH Cooperative Agreement for Methodologic Research for Multisite Epidemiological Surveys of Mental Disorders in Child and Adolescent Populations (MECA Study) and co-investigator in a survey of alternative service patterns of children with serious emotional disturbance conducted in the late nineties in Westchester County, New York. He has emphasized the importance of incorporating impairment in the definition of psychopathology and has pioneered the development of measures of impairment. Dr. Bird is presently conducting an NIMH–funded five-year longitudinal study contrasting the development of antisocial behavior and its determinants in Puerto Rican children residing in the South Bronx in New York and those residing on the island of Puerto Rico.
Pat Cohen, M.D.: Dr. Cohen’s work includes a broad range of empirical, methodological, and statistical work focusing on longitudinal data in psychiatric epidemiology. Her major research commitments include the 25-year study of a cohort of young children randomly selected from a geographical area. Dr. Cohen is co-director of the Psychiatric Epidemiology Training Program, which is jointly in the Division of Epidemiology of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Mark Davies, M.P.H., is a biostatistician who has worked in child psychiatry since 1979. He is currently the co-director of the Biostatistics and Measurement Core of the NIMH Child Psychiatry Intervention Research Center. His research interests include the statistical aspects of reliability particularly for multi-informant assessment procedures. He has worked with virtually every research trainee since the inception of the training program. Activities to support the research trainees have included statistical consulting, advising on course work in statistics, teaching elements of statistical analysis and programming on a one-on-one basis, and assisting trainees to prepare grant applications and manuscripts. Mr. Davies is readily available to all the fellows and typically will meet with the trainees on a weekly schedule during the periods when statistical assistance is required.
Prudence Fisher, Ph.D., an assistant professor of clinical psychiatric social work and a research scientist, serves as the director of the Measurement Unit of the NIMH Child Psychiatry Intervention Research Center, where she provides consultation and education regarding measurement and training in instrument administration. Dr. Fisher’s research interests focus on measurement issues in the assessment of psychopathology in children and adolescents, including bereavement, suicidal behavior, and posttraumatic-stress disorder, and on the improving assessment of adverse events in clinical trials. She was instrumental in the development of the NIMH Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC). Dr. Fisher is readily available to all fellows for measurement consultation. Most consultations concern the selection of measures to address the hypotheses of a particular study (e.g., general diagnostic or diagnosis-specific measures or measures to assess social support or family functioning) and training on their use.
Kimberly Hoagwood, Ph.D., is professor of clinical psychology in psychiatry with Columbia University and director of research on child and adolescent services for the Office of Mental Health in the State of New York. In this capacity, she directs all research programs on youth and family service effectiveness, outcomes, and implementation of evidence-based practices for the state. Formerly, she served as associate director of child and adolescent mental health research within the office of the director at the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Hoagwood was also chief of the child and adolescent services research program at NIMH for 10 years. Her research and mentoring focus involves examining the efficacy and effectiveness of child and adolescent services, evidence-based practices and their implementation in children’s service systems, national psychotropic medication practices, research ethics, and genetic epistemology.
Christina Hoven, Dr.P.H.: Dr. Hoven was PI of the World Trade Center Needs Assessment, the first epidemiological study conducted on a representative sample of children post-disaster. Dr. Hoven recently received a grant to conduct a pilot study focusing on children of World Trade Center evacuees. Genetic (DNA), biological (cortisol), and MRI studies will complement the diagnostic and socio-ecological survey data to elucidate possible psychopathology transmission mechanisms. Feasibility and research findings from this pilot study are anticipated to lead to a large-scale longitudinal study. She will be involved in a six-county study to assess the impact of increasing awareness of child mental health problems. Recently, Dr. Hoven was the PI of an NIMH study, “The Alternative Service Patterns of Children with Serious Emotional Disturbance (SED).” The design of this pioneer epidemiological-services study examined career ladders in both a random community sample and samples from the five youth services agencies. This SED study has provided many research fellows with an important dataset from which to publish.
Lisa Hunter, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Child Psychiatry at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and the director of school-based mental health programs at Columbia University’s Center for the Advancement of Children’s Mental Health. Dr. Hunter has a strong research background in the development, implementation, and evaluation of school-based mental health and prevention programs. She has mentored students and provided consultation in these areas.
John Mann, M.D., is chief of the Division of Neuroscience in the Department of Psychiatry at NYSPI. He studies the neurobiology of mood disorders and the diathesis for suicidal behavior, with a focus on dysfunction of the serotonergic and other neurotransmitter systems. His research methodologies employ neurochemical assays of cerebrospinal fluid, receptor and signal transduction mechanisms, molecular genetic studies of candidate genes, and functional brain imaging studies using PET, complemented by structural and functional studies using MRI and MRS. He has collaborated on a number of projects in child psychiatry, including studies of depressed and suicidal adolescents. Dr. Mann provided mentorship in terms of biological study methods and the application of imaging techniques to child psychiatry.
Laura Mufson, Ph.D., a clinical child psychologist and former research trainee, has modified IPT for depressed adolescents (IPT-A). She has tested efficacy of IPT-A in open and randomized controlled clinical trials. She recently completed one of the first studies testing the use of an evidence-based intervention in a community setting. As co-director of the Psychotherapy Core of the NIMH Child Psychiatry Intervention Research Center, she conducts a monthly workshop on treatment manual development open to fellows and faculty interested in developing treatment manuals for clinical trials. Research fellows have participated in her research by receiving psychotherapy training and participating as IPT-A therapists, as independent evaluators in the trials, and by assisting in parts of the studies, such as a follow-up study of the participants in the effectiveness study in the school-based health clinics.
Daniel Schechter, M.D.: Dr. Schechter’s research is focused on understanding how psychophysiologic regulation within the context of infant-parent attachment might be perturbed by a history of parental violent trauma and associated psychopathology. He currently directs the early childhood rotation for the child and adolescent psychiatry residents at Columbia/NYSPI, and he is the medical director of the Infant-Family Service, a clinical service for families with children ages birth to four years who are at risk for exposure to family violence, abuse, and neglect. His research involves applying methodologies that incorporate the use of narrative, behavioral, neuroendocrine, and neurophysiology measures within groups of violence-exposed families and in comparison to non-violence exposed families to understand the relationship of attachment-related factors to trauma-related pathophysiology.
Gail Wasserman, Ph.D., directs the Center for the Promotion of Mental Health in Juvenile Justice and is professor of clinical psychology in child psychiatry. Current research, in collaboration with juvenile justice agencies across the country, examines prevalence of disorder, risks for suicide in justice youths, development of new instruments, comparisons of instruments and assessment procedures in identifying mental health needs, and juvenile justice practices as they relate to identification, referral, and treatment of mental health needs. Opportunities for trainees include access to a number of well-defined data sets from collaborating justice agencies for secondary data analysis, as well as collaboration on current work in juvenile justice.
Agnes Whitaker, M.D., is a child and adolescent psychiatrist who directs the Clinical Developmental Neuropsychiatry Service located in New York Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Whitaker has a long-standing interest in brain injury and behavior problems in children. She is currently funded by the NIMH to conduct a 15-year follow-up of a regional cohort of low-birth-weight infants who were screened as neonates with serial cranial ultrasound for perinatal brain injury. Dr. Whitaker is interested in supervising fellows on a range of different kinds of projects, from secondary data analyses of collected data sets on adolescent health behaviors and low-birth-weight outcomes to designing new studies that use existing samples she has already developed.
HongTu Zhu, Ph.D.: Dr. Zhu, a biostatistician, is an expert in longitudinal data analysis, structure equation models, statistical epidemiology, model diagnostics, and brain imaging analysis. His recent work includes developing methods for latent variable models with application in psychology, diagnostics for evaluating statistical models, test procedures for testing variance components in mixed effect models, methods to evaluate the genetic inheritance of complex diseases, and methods for joint modeling behavioral measurements and MRI data. Dr. Zhu is developing a series of statistical methods for analyzing fMRI, MRI, and DTI data using regression trees and neural-network and structure-equation models. He currently mentors four postdoctoral fellows, three junior faculty members, and 4 medical students in the application of statistical methods to MRI datasets.
- - - Length of Training back to top of page
Admission to the program is for one year. This will usually be renewed for a second year. Applicants are expected to make a minimum commitment of two years. Fellowships may be extended for a third year.
- - - Salaries back to top of page
Applicants with a medical qualification can usually expect their salaries to be supplemented to bring them to a level comparable with a PGY-6 trainee on the New York State Office of Mental Health salary scale (NYS PGY 6 unlicensed MD $70,736, NYS PGY 6 licensed MD $75,720).
Stipends for Ph.D.’s can usually be supplemented in exchange for appropriate involvement on some faculty-directed research project (see stipend chart). Health insurance benefits are provided for medically qualified fellows as part of their NYS salary supplement. Health insurance benefits are purchased from Columbia University for non-medically qualified fellows. All fellows receive a travel and tuition allowance of $1000 per year.
- - - Stipend Chart back to top of page
PGY
Year 0 $35,568
PGY Year 1 $37,476
PGY Year 2 $41,796
PGY Year 3 $43,428
PGY Year 4 $45,048
PGY Year 5 $46,992
PGY Year 6 $48,852
PGY Year 7+ $51,036
- - - Selection of Fellows back to top of page
Selection of trainees is based on potential and commitment for research in child psychopathology. Highest priority for admission goes to psychiatrists who have completed at least one year of child psychiatry training and PhD’s who have already undertaken research in fields such as child development, biological psychopathology, or biostatistics who want to apply that training to clinical research problems in Child Psychiatry. In exceptional cases, applicants with no prior experience or training but with a strong commitment to child or adolescent research will be admitted.
- - - Application Procedures back to top of page
To apply, write a letter that
indicates reasons for wanting to receive research training in clinical
child psychiatry. Summarize previous involvement in research (if any)
indicating skills and insight acquired, and types of skills for which
training is now being sought. It is also helpful to attach a brief (five
pages or less) research proposal of your ideas and abilities to set
reasonable goals. There is no commitment to complete the project.
Send
applications to:
David Shaffer, MD
New York State Psychiatric Institute
1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 78
New York, NY 10032
OPPORTUNITIES
