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Setting
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center is a very special place. Jointly administered by the UCLA School of Medicine and the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, this world famous 500 bed acute general hospital provides a rare combination of academic excellence and the rich patient flow of a major public teaching hospital. The hospital contains distinguished departments and training programs in all major specialties, and the Department of Psychiatry is entering its third decade of research, training, and service to patients and their families.
We aim for a mutually respectful departmental climate where patients, their families, psychiatric trainees, and the staff come toward each other in a constructive and helpful manner. In these times of the ever changing landscape of mental health services and dwindling financial resources, we aim for a training milieu designed to prepare the young psychiatrist both in terms of needed skills and appropriate attitudes for a successful career. We want to train a scientifically competent and caring psychiatrist who treats the mind and the brain, and who feels personal responsibility for the health care system in which he or she works. Trainees’ special interests and talents are encouraged and built upon, and form the earliest days of training, residents are encouraged to develop their own research and/or special treatment programs.
The departmental leadership has been stable for many years and we have not had to decrease the size of our training program. At the same time, however, we realize that the practice of psychiatry and models of training have changed and we have been actively addressing these changes. We have made a major structural change in the delivery of psychiatric services towards a vertically integrated system where patients have continuity of care and residents, faculty, and staff work in multidisciplinary teams responsible for delivery of care through all phases of illness. This allows trainees to have longitudinal responsibility for patients and provides a more efficient and cost-effective model of service delivery.
Among the full range of psychiatric services and training offered, the experience in emergency psychiatry is the match of any in the country. We have a 5,000 square foot, state-of-the-art psychiatric emergency room which allows not only for the humane care of seriously disturbed patients, but also provides a milieu for studies in emergency psychiatry. We also have a model program for the treatment of patients with severe and persistent mental disorders who are high utilizers of services. This integrated services program, the AMI/ABLE program, offers services including psych-social rehabilitation, job and social skills training, novel pharmacologic agents, intensive case management, and active family involvement. It is the prototype for a number of additional programs which have been established in Los Angeles County and throughout the state.
Our Department of Psychiatry is the site of a National Institute of Mental Health Minority Mental Health Research Unit, the Harbor-UCLA Research Center on the Psychobiology of Ethnicity. It is unique in the nation, as it is the only NIMH center mandated to study patients form multiple ethnic groups from a psychobiological as well as cultural perspective. Its research laboratory is also the first of its kind to be dedicated to study of ethnic considerations in pharmacokinetics, pharmacogenetics, psychoneuro-endocrinology, and chronobiology. Residents have taken an active role in center projects and are the beneficiaries of the many professional visitors who come to educate center staff on a range of issues relevant to the interface of ethnicity, biology, and psychiatric practice.
Our capacity for studies in neuroimaging is at the cutting edge of psychiatry. On the Harbor campus there is a Diagnostic Imaging Center where a full range of imaging studies are performed. We carry out clinical studies and research investigations of cerebral blood flow using functional MRI, single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT), and we have an NMR spectroscopy unit. In addition to the above areas of research, we have investigations in neuropsychological testing and brain function in normal aging and in psychiatric disorders of the elderly; pioneering studies in the sequelae of childhood abuse and victimization; psychopharmacologic studies of depression, anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia; projects involving psychosocial aspects of HIV infection and AIDS; and outcome studies concerning patients with persistent mental disorders.
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center is in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, only five miles from some of the most appealing beaches in Southern California. Harbor is about 15 miles from the Los Angeles International Airport, and 30 minutes from the cultural centers in the downtown and West Los Angeles areas. In addition to our hospital, the facilities of the Neuropsychiatric Institute on the campus of UCLA and the West Los Angeles Veterans Hospital are available for elective rotations.
Ira Lesser, M.D.
Professor & Chair
Department of Psychiatry