Our department has a diverse and accomplished faculty with expertise in a wide range of areas including mood, anxiety and psychotic disorders; medical psychiatric illness; inflammation pathways and mental health; workplace mental health; childhood development; trauma and its sequela; familial systems including family therapy; and various forms of individual psychotherapy modalities including psychodynamic. Our faculty are nationally and internationally recognized with over 20 full time faculty who are deeply knowledgeable clinician teachers and include principal investigators exploring various areas of psychiatry. Our faculty publishes dozens of articles per year detailing their original research, scholarship, advocacy and policy recommendations. They also include leaders of national and international psychiatric organizations who affect the future of our field.
About this program
Our department is home to three interrelated training programs:
- Our General Adult Psychiatry Program
- Our Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship program
- Our Triple Board Program (adult psychiatry/child and adolescent psychiatry/pediatrics); one of only nine programs in the United States.
Our clinical services include consult-liaison psychiatry for inpatient, emergency room, and primary care settings, an independent addiction consult-liaison psychiatry service, inpatient services on the Tufts Medical Center campus for medically and psychiatrically complex adult patients, and emergency and outpatient services for all age groups, including children and adolescents. In addition, we have vital training, teaching and clinical care relationships with the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health where our faculty staff one of two forensic psychiatric hospitals and a a long term inpatient public mental health facility.
Tufts Medical Center is the principal teaching hospital for the Tufts University School of Medicine and our department is the principal academic home for the Department of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine. In addition, the Tufts Medicine system includes an affiliated network of hospitals and physicians that care for thousands of patients each year at major medical centers in Massachusetts and Maine, while training hundreds of medical students, residents and fellows.
Psychiatry is in a unique period in its long history. The complex, often fearsome and stigmatized illnesses for which we care are progressively beginning to yield to increasing clinical investigation including genetics and neuroimaging. New treatments – including psychotherapeutic and psychopharmacologic – are being assessed in clinical trials and effectiveness studies. There is a growing and crucial recognition of the large illness burden of psychiatric illness on quality of life, disability, mortality and co-morbid medical illnesses. Our faculty and students are public citizens as well: providing care and donating their time across our city and globally. From China, to Haiti, to Serbia and Tanzania, Tufts psychiatry faculty are present, bringing their expertise and compassion to a suffering world. Being in an often tumultuous political and social climate, we are mindful of the long history of systemic racism and discrimination which affects so many of our patients, trainees and faculty. We are devoted to serving our diverse and vibrant patients and communities. We are committed to continuously evaluating and addressing these issues to work towards ending these disparities. This is a unique time to train in psychiatry, and we are honored to be advocating for our patients, communities, trainees, and the future of our field as a whole.
Dr. Brent Forester
Dr. Francis S. Arkin Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine
Psychiatrist-in-Chief, Tufts Medical Center
