
Three Proposals for Trauma-Sensitive Residency Programs
What should residency programs be doing to address current traumas?
COMMENTARY
The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, a lethal presidential transition, the ongoing reckoning with policing in America, and a gaping racial wound that has been present since well-before the nation’s inception have traumatized an untold number of Americans. Like most institutions associated with mental health services, graduate medical education in psychiatry will need to evolve in tangible ways to meet the demands of this moment. Here are 3 proposals that would help residency programs produce trainees that are adept at both treating and advocating for a traumatized populace.
1. Emphasize Psychotherapy in Training
Residency programs will need to continue their efforts to keep psychotherapy as a mainstay of psychiatric practice. Psychotherapy continues to be a
A multi-site survey of psychiatry residents conducted between 2006 and 2007 showed that
A possible solution could be to offer psychotherapy
2. Formalized Education in Historical Trauma
Adopting this framework contextualizes trauma from historical injustices as a collective experience for members of a community. Moreover, it frames trauma as an ongoing process, as opposed to a singular historical event with a definitive bookend. Placing contemporary injustices in a historical context will bolster cultural competency, and in turn yield a stronger therapeutic alliance with patients.
3. Train Psychiatrists to be Advocates
This moment demands that psychiatrists accept our mutually reinforcing roles of healer and advocates for public mental health. Therefore, residency programs must incorporate seminars and/or workshops on advocacy into didactics, and the ACGME should consider instituting this as a requirement. As a specialty, psychiatry must be attuned to an individual’s socioeconomic status, as well as their sociopolitical circumstances—these are central to mental well-being. Improving a community’s mental health needs to simultaneously address the conditions that either predispose individuals to poor mental health or exacerbate current conditions. This requires engagement that goes beyond the clinic, hospital, or an electronic screen. The key challenge here will be to strike a precarious balance between respecting individual autonomy and paternalism.
Advocacy through meaningful community engagement can assume many different modalities, including but not limited to social media, coalition building, developing relationships with local stakeholders, or lobbying local legislators, etc. Programs may consider developing a formal curriculum that equips trainees with effective strategies for exploring these avenues. This should go hand in hand with developing networks of local advocates who can help trainees gain in-field experience.
The good news is that psychiatry already recognizes the indispensable role of social determinants to an individual’s overall well-being. This is why it is the specialty that tends to champion the various causes of social justice, whether they be racial, economic, environmental, reproductive, etc. Moving forward, it would be a boon to our patients if this became an occupational objective, rather than an occupational hazard.
Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Dr James Knoll for his edits to this piece.
Faiz Kidwai is a PGY1 in psychiatry at Upstate Medical University. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of his institution. You can find him on Twitter at
References
1. Guideline Development Panel for the Treatment of PTSD in Adults, American Psychological Association. Summary of the clinical practice guideline for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adults. Am Psychol. 2019;74(5):596-607.
2. Mojtabai R, Olfson M. National trends in psychotherapy by office-based psychiatrists. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008;65(8):962-970.
3. Lanouette NM, Calabrese C, Sciolla AF, et al. Do psychiatry residents identify as psychotherapists? A multisite survey. Ann Clin Psychiatry. 2011;23(1):30-39.
4. Moran M. Should psychotherapy be a psychiatric subspecialty? Psychiatric News. March 26, 2020.
5. Mohatt NV, Thompson AB, Thai ND, Tebes JK. Historical trauma as public narrative: A conceptual review of how history impacts present-day health. Soc Sci Med. 2014;106:128-136.
6. Menschner C, Maul A. Key ingredients for successful trauma-informed care implementation. April 2016.
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