Curriculum

Our curriculum will familiarize you with all aspects of forensic psychiatry and prepare you for forensic practice, research and teaching.

By the time you complete our yearlong program, you will feel prepared to take the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology’s exam for certification in forensic psychiatry.

Your training experiences will include everything from working with incarcerated juveniles to managing violent patients and gaining familiarity with court-ordered forensic assessments.

Our rotations include research, electives and training at clinical and correctional sites:

Through our didactics, you will increase your ability to read critically the forensic psychiatric and legal literature and communicate your findings and professional opinion to others.

We offer a stimulating set of didactics that prepares you to specialize in forensic psychiatry:

Pursuing a scholarly project will familiarize you with special research considerations in the field of forensic psychiatry and sharpen your ability to review and synthesize scientific literature. Each week, you’ll review your scholarly project with your faculty mentor.

We encourage you to publish your work in peer-reviewed journals and present at national conferences, particularly the annual meeting for the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

When you complete our program, you’ll be well prepared to succeed in any environment. Our connections to a major health care facility and the Erie County jail management division give you experience in disparate settings.

You’ll train in a 10-bed inpatient psychiatric unit for patients with an increased risk of violence. The unit is part of Erie County Medical Center, one of the area’s leading health care providers.

We’ll give you experience working in the Erie County Holding Center, a pretrial, maximum security detention facility. The holding center — the second largest detention facility in New York — processes more than 20,000 adult inmates annually. 

At Erie County’s juvenile detention facility, you’ll work with youths who have committed criminal acts. These adolescents have been placed in custody through law enforcement arrest, family court order or outstanding warrants. You’ll also work with juveniles who have been charged with serious crimes and are being prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system.

You may have opportunities to work with a population of non-arraigned, non-sentenced, sentenced and federal inmates during our rotation at Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden, New York. You’ll see adults and adolescents adjudicated as adults.

During some rotations, you’ll have opportunities to supervise psychiatry residents. You can expect to teach them about the process of conducting forensic evaluations.