Women's Mental Health Fellowship

Women's Mental Health Fellowship

The Women's Mental Health Fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, provides exciting subspecialty training opportunities for residents interested in the ways sex and gender can exert a major influence on the course, expression and treatment of psychiatric disorders. The purpose of the fellowship is to train expert clinicians in the psychiatric care of women, and in the assessment and treatment of psychiatric symptoms linked with female reproductive cycle transitions. Please email wmhfellowship@bwh.harvard.edu for more information.

A one-year, established Mass General Brigham-accredited fellowship dedicated to comprehensive women’s mental health subspecialty training The Department of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital provides a unique and robust setting for women’s mental health training with rich and varied clinical exposure across a variety of settings including subspecialty ambulatory, consultation liaison, and co-located clinics in obstetrics, primary care and NICU settings as well as exposure to multiples areas of subspecialty within women’s mental health including reproductive psychiatry, mental health at midlife and beyond, perinatal addiction psychiatry, women’s mental health at the intersection of forensics/ethics as well as elective rotations through the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Women's Psychosocial Oncology Services and Mclean Hospital, where the fellow will be exposed to diagnosis and treatment of personality disorders, eating disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder across varied settings. The program provides exciting subspecialty training opportunities for potential applicants interested in the ways sex and gender can exert a major influence on the course, expression and treatment of psychiatric disorders.

Fellows will develop expertise in the psychiatric care of women, and in the assessment and treatment of psychiatric symptoms linked with female reproductive cycle transitions. The fellowship emphasizes clinical experience, but also includes a scholarly project, the nature and scope of which depends on the fellow's interests. For those who are interested, there may be opportunities to expand the academic project to include a larger amount of protected research time throughout the course of the fellowship.

About BWH: Our fellow will be trained in an extraordinarily rich clinical, educational, and research environment. BWH has 8,000 deliveries per year and is world-renowned for expertise in psychiatry, gynecology, and neurology care, and ranks consistently as one the nation’s top ten hospitals according to US News and World Report. The BWH Research Institute is the second largest recipient of National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals in the United States, and is home to the landmark Nurses' Health Study and Women’s Health Initiative, two of the largest studies of women ever conducted.

Primary Sites

Women's Mental Health Service Psychiatric Specialties: An outpatient service offering consultation, diagnostic evaluation, pharmacotherapy and brief psychotherapy for women with reproductive-related psychiatric or psychological symptoms

Reproductive Psychiatry Consultation Service: A service embedded within medical psychiatry. This service provides consultations to inpatients on the Brigham and Women's obstetrics and gynecological floors.

Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program (MCPAP for Moms): A statewide service that provides real-time, perinatal psychiatric consultation and resource and referral for obstetric, pediatric, primary care and psychiatric providers to effectively prevent, identify, and manage their pregnant and postpartum patients' mental health and substance use concerns.

Secondary Sites

Women's Mental Health Service at the Gretchen and Edward Fish Center for Women's Health: A service that offers comprehensive outpatient mental health care as part of an integrated, multidisciplinary program including primary care and other specialty care services

Brigham and Women's Hospital Ambulatory Obstetrics Practice: A service that offers comprehensive outpatient mental health care as part of an integrated, multidisciplinary practice

Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU): Directly embedded multidisciplinary services. Mental health services for parents with babies admitted to the NICU.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Women's Psychosocial Oncology Services: The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Psychosocial Oncology Department offers psychopharmacology, cognitive-behavioral and problem-focused psychotherapy to women experiencing cancer-related issues such as emotional distress, cognitive changes, body image changes, sexual health, relationship concerns, parenting concerns, existential concerns and grief.

McLean Hospital: As part of this elective the fellow will be involved/participate in psychiatric units designed to treat women with eating disorders, trauma disorders, and borderline personality disorder.

Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Psychiatric Clinic: Offers consultation, diagnostic evaluation and treatment for women who are struggling with difficult emotional reactions to infertility and its treatment or women who have mental health problems and infertility. Patients are treated through infertility work up and treatment, pregnancy and postpartum.

Application Process

Applications are accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis.

Interested applicants are encouraged to contact us as soon as possible.

As applications are received and reviewed, qualified candidates will be invited for an interview day.

Eligibility Requirements

Potential applicants who do not have US citizenship or permanent residency in the US should contact us before submitting their application.

Applicants must have completed an ACGME-accredited psychiatry residency before the fellowship begins and can be licensed to practice medicine in Massachusetts. For more information about the fellowship and the application requirements, visit our website: brighamandwomens.org/wmhf

Or contact the Women’s Mental Health Fellowship coordinator:

Michelle Laflam

617-732-5213 - mlaflam1@bwh.harvard.edu

Department of Psychiatry