FHCW/UMass Chan Primary Care Psychiatry Fellowship

Some of the fellows will be seeing their first patients this week!

Needless to say, we’re rooting for them and glad to have them on our team, caring for our community.

Rolling admissions are now in session for our next Primary Care Psychiatry cohort! DM for more info!

We’re thrilled to welcome Vanessa for our 4th Primary Care Psychiatry (PC-P) Fellowship class!

Our 2024 academic year starts this coming Monday and we know we have a great year ahead!

If you’re in a primary care field and are interested in learning more about psychiatry with an emphasis on structural vulnerability and trauma informed practices, this fellowship is for you!

Today is World Mental Health Day and we are sending so much love to all those who have been affected by mental health conditions.

This post by has so many great ways to support someone who lives with a mental health disorder.

If you’re a primary care provider interested in learning about how you can improve your psychiatric knowledge so you can better support your patients, check out and consider applying to our fellowship!

Congratulations to Ngan Tran and Stephany Giraldo Eierle who graduated from the Primary Care Psychiatry Fellowship! They will be both be staying at FHCW as both psychiatric services and primary care providers. Ngan will continue providing care on T3 and will remain a member of the refugee team, an OBAT provider, an esketamine provider, and much more! Stephany will transition to primarily remote care and assume the role of Lead Provider of Perinatal Psychiatry as a member of both the Psychiatric Services and Perinatal Services leadership teams. Please join us in congratulating Ngan and Stephany on their fantastic work and achievement! 🎓🧠🎉🩺

Since 1987, the MMS Committee on Maternal and Perinatal Welfare holds an annual lecture on emerging issues in maternal health in honor of John Figgis Jewett, MD, a Boston obstetrician-gynecologist who was a pioneer in maternal and infant welfare in Massachusetts.

This year’s Jewett Lecture, held today at the Massachusetts Academy of Family Physician’s 2024 Annual Meeting and Spring Refresher, featured Dr. Nancy Byatt, an incredibly well- respected researcher and clinical leader in the field of perinatal mental health who has spearheaded many trailblazing initiatives in this realm. Dr. Byatt presented on “Building the Capacity of Healthcare Systems to Promote Perinatal Mental Health.”

To learn more about the MMS Committee on Maternal and Perinatal Welfare, please visit: https://ow.ly/Ajog50QP8p2

Hurt caused from abuse and trauma needs tending — it doesn’t just go away. If we leave wounds untreated, they can cause further harm and develop into mental disorders.

Even things you don’t remember, both good and bad, get stored in your body and mind and become the foundation of your life. Experiences show us:
How we can expect to be treated
How others value us
Who will love us
What future is possible

When families experience trauma, the stress can leave children with lifelong challenges.

Worcester Addresses Childhood Trauma's goal is to decrease stigma, build community by talking about difficult things, and increase empathy and understanding for ourselves and others.

We help the next generation by healing ourselves.

Our current mental health system tells us we are the problem and need fixing. That is not the truth.

Trauma is the weapon of oppression. Our systems are the problem. Every system controls the distribution of power and resources.

Our symptoms are predictable responses to powerlessness. We tend to either act out in anger or act in and isolate. Shame keeps us from talking about what happened. We believe no one understands or cares, keeping the perpetrators in control and unaccountable. We build walls to keep ourselves safe, but these walls become a prison keeping us from the only thing that does heal: connection.

Our vision is a world where everyone is valued for their humanity.

Sign up for announcements of future monthly Trauma Training Tuesdays:
https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/M9N2ExV

WorcesterACTs.org

Our Primary Care Psychiatry Fellows & FHCW’s HIV/Viral Hepatitis fellows have just finished the second session of UMass Chan’s nationally-recognized Teaching of Tomorrow training.

They had a blast and left with concrete ways to be more effective educators.

Their experience was funded by the UMass Family Medicine and Community Health Department and yours could be too if you decided to do this fellowship! Recruitment for the fellowship cohort beginning July 2024 is happening now, so check out our website and consider sending in your application.

Today’s lecture on global mental health helps us question our assumptions so we can take better care of our patients.

Interested in developing your psych skills as a P*P?
Recruitment for the fellowship cohort beginning later this year is happening now, so check out our website and consider sending in your application!

This week, our fellows are reading excerpts from Rachel Aviv’s Strangers to Ourselves (). This excellent book explores the ways a psychiatric diagnosis can affect a person’s sense of identity and influence their behaviors and perspectives.

Interested in developing your psych skills as a P*P? Recruitment for the fellowship cohort beginning later this year is happening now, so check out our website and consider sending in your application!

“We aren’t the authors of our emotions; we’re the editors.”

Each Wednesday, fellows attend a didactic session with fellowship faculty or guests, and have time to review cases they’ve recently seen. This week, we began our module on Generalized Anxiety Disorder and were thrilled to welcome returning guest lecturer Amber Cahill, PsyD, for a phenomenal talk on anxiety interventions.

Interested in the fellowship? Recruitment for the cohort beginning July 2024 is happening now, so check out our website and consider sending in your application!
https://www.umassmed.edu/fmch/primary-care-psychiatry/

Let’s 🌮 about Trauma Tuesday!

Every month our team joins Worcester ACTs for their Trauma Training Tuesday series which “centers the lived experience and expertise of people that have been impacted by specific distressing and life altering events.”

Yesterday’s topic was on Hoarding.
Did you know that for many people who have faced trauma, this can be a way of coping or preventing future harm onto themselves?

After a great training, we wrapped up our bipolar depression module, and headed to .worcester for some quality fellowship team time!