About
Beth A. Smith, MD is interim chair of the Department of Psychiatry, which offers outstanding research opportunities for medical students, residents and fellows.
Our department works to advance knowledge of psychiatric illness and its treatment; to provide state-of-the-art, evidence-based, clinical services to the community; and to educate the next generation of clinical and scientific leaders in psychiatry.
Our Faculty
Our department has 52 full-time and 89 volunteer faculty members, as well as 33 staff support members.
Medical Student Education
We teach required second- and third-year courses for 180 medical students in each class, as well as research and clinical electives for our own medical students and for students around the country.
The success of these efforts is indicated in part by consistently high scores on standardized internal and licensing examinations, and by one of the highest rates in the Unites States of recruitment of UB medical students into psychiatry, as well as one of the highest rates of recruitment of medical students into our own residency.
We offer a scholarship for medical students who plan to enter psychiatry and remain in the area that is funded by a generous grant from the Patrick Lee Foundation.
Resident and Fellow Training
We have a general psychiatry residency and fellowships in child psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, and emergency psychiatry, as well as a psychology internship for psychologists who plan on working in public/forensic mental health.
Our faculty participate in postgraduate educational activities regionally and nationally for physicians in other specialties, nonphysician mental health practitioners and the public.
Clinical Expertise
Department faculty provide all mental health care at Erie County Medical Center. This includes 136 inpatient beds, a very busy consultation/liaison service, two outpatient clinics and the busiest psychiatric emergency service in New York State.
Our faculty provide all psychiatric care at Buffalo General Medical Center and Oshei Children’s Hospital, as well as the Erie County correctional system for adults and adolescents.
We have a particular interest in collaborative care with other specialties and have extensive clinical and research collaborations with pediatrics, internal medicine, neurology, neurosurgery, and orthopedics.
Faculty members provide clinical care to a broad range of patients in the public and private sectors in a variety of settings, as well as consultations to agencies such as Horizon Health Care, Buffalo Psychiatric Center and the Western New York Children’s Psychiatric Center, all of which provide training sites for residents.
Research
We host a range of research activities in psychopharmacology, mood disorders, traumatic brain injury, psychosomatic medicine, violence and related behavioral disorders, psychopharmacology and instrumental therapies.
A number of faculty members are engaged in studies with other disciplines of the outcome of novel community interventions for complex disorders such as autism, as well as comparative outcomes of alternatives to standard methods of delivery of mental health care.
In 2020, our faculty had 108 new publications and 48 grants and contracts.
Diversity
The Department of Psychiatry has an ongoing commitment to enhancing diversity in faculty and learners.
A standing departmental committee addresses issues such as recruitment of faculty and residents from populations that are under-represented in medicine, developing new ways of working with cultural and related factors that affect patients’ perceptions of clinicians and treatment settings, and providing clinicians for students and the public who are skilled at treating minority populations.
