Psychotherapy, residensy

The Psychotherapy Division is responsible for developing a comprehensive psychotherapy curriculum for psychiatry residents and promoting, supporting, and coordinating psychotherapy clinical, education, and research activities within the Department.

At SUNY Upstate in Syracuse, we believe that psychotherapy is more than just a set of theories and techniques. We believe that every encounter between psychiatrists and their patients should be empathic and therapeutic (psychotherapeutic), even if the primary intervention is changing medications. Thus psychotherapy is a key aspect of a psychiatrist's professional identity and a basic way of relating to patients.

Some key assumptions of our training model include:

Psychotherapy is less about doing something to a patient than a way of being with a patient. It involves staying close to experience while paradoxically maintaining reflective space.

No model of psychotherapy, whether psychodynamic or CBT, is going to be effective without the therapist having empathic and reflective capacities.

Empathic and reflective capacities are not simply skillsets that can be taught. These capacities are built upon a supportive environment that minimizes stress, fosters connection with peers, and provides opportunities to share emotions and experiences with others.

Sequential Training Objectives:

Focus on restoring empathic capacity through experiential learning.

Teach common factors and key concepts.

Train discrete models, e.g., CBT, psychodynamic, DDP, DBT, play therapy, etc.

SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY, is the only academic medical centre in Central New York. It is also the region's largest employer with 9,460 employees. Affiliated with the State University of New York, Upstate's mission is to improve the community's health through education, biomedical research, and health care.

Its four colleges anchor Upstate Medical University's educational mission—Medicine, Nursing, Health Professions, and Graduate Studies (biomedical sciences).

As a biomedical research enterprise, Upstate focuses on the most prevalent human diseases, including cancer, diabetes, heart disease, nervous system disorders, vision, and infectious diseases. The quest for treatments and cures is built upon expertise in structural, molecular, and systems biology. Upstate also offers many clinical trials for patients.

We offer dozens of unique health care services to our region through Upstate University Hospital, Upstate University Hospital at Community Campus, and our outpatient clinics. We also house the Upstate Golisano Children's Hospital to serve the region.

The mission of SUNY Upstate Medical University is to improve the health of the communities we serve through education, biomedical research, and patient care. Everything we do at Upstate—teaching students, discovering new knowledge through research, and caring for patients—is done to achieve that goal.