General Psychiatry Residency Program
The UT Southwestern Department of Psychiatry strives to graduate our residents at the cutting edge of all aspects of psychiatry, training outstanding evidence-oriented clinicians and providing excellent clinical care to patients.
Our Psychiatry Residency Program offers an innovative and exciting didactic and clinical/experiential base for training. Faculty and residents work together, balancing clinical service and education. We have a patient base that is diverse in every way: ethnoculturally, socioeconomically, and by clinical service (private, public sector, community, etc.). This variety ensures that our residents will be able to practice psychiatry anywhere with anyone.
Our Mission: HEAR
Diverse Training Sites
Our residents encounter a wide variety of patient populations and systems of psychiatric care.
Our affiliate institutions:
- Parkland Health & Hospital System, one of the nation's premier public county hospitals
- William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital, a UT Southwestern hospital
- Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center, one of the VA's academic flagship centers
- Children's Health Dallas, a private tertiary care pediatric hospital
- Metrocare Services, an innovative public-private community psychiatry system
- University of Texas Arlington and University of North Texas Student Mental Health
We involve every resident in each setting in a coherent plan that balances patient care and education. Diversity of settings allows residents to care for the widest possible range of patients by diagnosis, ethnic background, socioeconomic status, and location.
Residents must be eligible to rotate at each of our clinical training sites. Most sites require proof of COVID-19 vaccination, and some sites do not allow for exemptions to this requirement.
Psychiatry Residency Program Structure
We follow the requirements of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and provide rotations through different centers of care across the four postgraduate years (PGY) designed to:
- establish identity and competence as a physician and ability to manage medical emergencies, primary care, and fundamentals of psychiatric assessment and treatment (PGY1)
- consolidate identity and competence as a psychiatrist and ability to diagnose and manage acute presentations of all major areas of psychopathology in ethnically and socioeconomically diverse patients (PGY2)
- deepen understanding of diagnosis and formulation and develop competence in long-term management of psychiatric illness (PGY3)
- consolidate skills, pursue specific interests and passions, and begin to develop specific expertise (PGY4)
The best way to learn about what it is like to be a resident in our program is to hear from some of the residents themselves about their program choice and career goals.
With our Internal Medicine-Psychiatry Combined Residency Program, residents have an unparalleled opportunity to create and grow the culture of combined practice at our premier academic medical center! We offer a 5-year combined residency program with 30 months each of internal medicine and psychiatry.
The UT Southwestern Neurology-Psychiatry Combined Residency Program is an ACGME-accredited, 6-year combined residency training program conferring board eligibility in both neurology and psychiatry upon completion of the program.
The UT Southwestern Triple Board Program trains diverse physician leaders and prepares them to treat and advocate for the most complex child and adolescent patients with co-occurring and intertwined physical and mental health problems. Graduates are board-eligible in Pediatrics, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and General Adult Psychiatry and are prepared to practice in any one of them.
We also have three Psychiatry Residency Tracks that allow applicants to match at the same time into both General (Adult) Psychiatry training and the special area of focus. The Child and Adult Psychiatry Combined Track allows applicants to match at the same time into both Adult and Child/Adolescent Psychiatry. The Research Track prepares residents for a future as a principal investigator in translational research. The Rural and Public Mental Health Track includes special seminars at Metrocare Services Center for Education and Research and progression of public psychiatry clinical experiences that prepare the resident to become a future leader in public mental health.
Additionally, many of our general psychiatry residents use their elective time in postgraduate years 3 and 4 to participate and achieve distinction in one of our seven established areas of concentration:
We constantly look for ways to support our residents because we believe patient care is best provided by psychiatrists who have balanced and satisfying lives. Our robust Psychiatry Residents Organization (PRO) runs many activities: the "Families" program, monthly social and leisure activities for residents, regular post-didactics get-togethers, and faculty-resident mixers. Our residents are leaders in initiating support programs for underrepresented minority residents, Muslim residents, and LGBT residents through the HEAL program (Housestaff Emerging Academy of Leaders). T-Group, an unstructured Training Group that emphasizes mutual support, problem solving, and experiential learning about small group processes, is an important source of peer support led by experienced group therapists. Our residents have access to the UT Southwestern Resident Wellness and Counseling Center and low-fee psychodynamic psychotherapy at the Dallas Psychoanalytic Center.
Our patients cannot flourish if they are not part of a supportive community. Therefore, advocacy for our patients is an important part of our identity.
We are committed to training psychiatrists who are expert in the brain, mind, and social systems; are highly capable at working in teams and care systems; meet each patient with dignity and the desire to listen; and feel supported by our training community and in turn support each other.
We believe this training can only happen in a community that is dedicated to pursuing health care equity through vigorous efforts to educate and expose our trainees to the cultural expanse of our community. Furthermore, we value the broad backgrounds that our trainees and staff members bring to our environment.
Over two-thirds of the Dallas population identify as an ethnic minority. Dallas has the largest population of individuals who identify as LGBTQI+ in Texas and one of the largest in the nation. The Latinx community in Dallas is one of the fastest growing in the country. A few examples from the vast amount of diverse cultural experiences in Dallas:
- African American Museum
- Caro Mia Theater Company
- Dallas Black Dance Theater
- Dallas Pride
- DFW Chinatown
- International Museum of Cultures
- Latino Cultural Center
- Latino Street Fest
- Oaklawn Area
- South Asian Film Festival
- South Dallas Cultural Center
- The Black Academy of Arts and Letters
Learn more about our diversity committees and initiatives for residents and our residency training program features.
View Dallas Life and learn more about graduate medical education at UT Southwestern.
Take a virtual tour of UT Southwestern's campus.
Residency Videos
Psychiatry Residency Experiences at William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital:
Psychiatry Residency Experiences at Parkland Hospital:
Psychiatry Faculty and Residents Speak from the UT Southwestern North Campus:
Residency Education Faculty
Adam Brenner, M.D.
- Director of Psychiatry Residency Training
- Vice Chair of Education
Lia Thomas, M.D.
- Associate Program Director for Recruitment and Engagement
- Associate Program Director for VA North Texas
Timothy Wolff, M.D.
- Associate Program Director for Resident and Program Evaluation
Adriane dela Cruz, M.D., Ph.D.
- Associate Program Director for Didactics and Scholarly Activity
- Director of the Research Track
Joshua Hubregsen, M.D.
- Associate Program Director for Clinical Training
Alyson Nakamura, M.D.
- Director of Psychotherapy Training
Molly Camp, M.D.
- Associate Program Director for Neurology/Psychiatry Combined Residency Program
Pedro Fernandez, M.D.
- Associate Program Director for Internal Medicine/Psychiatry Combined Residency Program
Kathlene Trello-Rishel, M.D.
- Director of the Child/Adult Combined Track
- Triple Board Training Director
- Child/Adolescent Fellowship Director
Juan Sosa, M.D.
- Director of the Rural and Public Mental Health Track