UMass Fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry

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The one-year ACGME approved Addiction Psychiatry fellowship, offered through the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School/UMass Memorial Healthcare System, provides physicians with training in psychiatry with advanced expertise in the recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of addictive disorders, as well as many clinical and translational research opportunities.

The Department of Psychiatry is committed to a major expansion of clinical and research services in the addictions, and the establishment of an academic Center of Excellence in Addictions.  Trainees will be part of a department with a major focus on addiction, including psychopharmacology, multiculturalism, basic neuroscience, psychosomatic medicine (working with Primary Care Medicine’s addiction faculty) and state-of-the-art psychosocial interventions.  Major public and private sector affiliations including a 120-bed private sector addiction hospital, a 16-bed public sector adolescent detoxification and rehabilitation unit, a new general hospital buprenorphine clinic with an intensive outpatient program for co-occurring disorders, an organizational-wide tobacco cessation program, and a continuum of care for opioid dependent patients from detoxification through substitution therapy to community rehabilitation, provide the trainee with a broad opportunity for training experiences to meet the requirements for ACGME.

The overall goal of the program is to provide fellows with the education and learning experience to expertise in the assessment, treatment and coordination of comprehensive care for individuals with substance use disorder. The  training also provides fellows with experience in co-occurring mental illness and addiction; experience in rehabilitation and longer term residential services for individuals with co-occurring psychiatric and medical conditions; and experience with several psychotherapy modalities, including group treatment programs and integration of family counseling services. 

The program has two teaching facilities that will facilitate exposure to clinical and teaching experience to meet training requirements (UMass Memorial Healthcare and Community Healthlink) and rotation sites that will expose the resident to the appropriate array of treatment modalities and experiences in treating different patient populations (AdCare Hospital, Westborough State Hospital, and Spectrum Health Systems).