Curriculum

Our fellowship offers advanced training in the full spectrum of forensic civil, criminal and correctional issues. As a forensic psychiatry fellow, you’ll benefit from our program of balanced rotations and didactics. 

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.

Rotations

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:

Didactics

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:

Research

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.

Diverse Training Sites and Populations

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.

Specialized behavioral management unit

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.

Holding center

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. 

Juvenile detention center

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.

Correctional facility

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.

Leadership Roles

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