The Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship curriculum gives you the skills, clinical judgment, and knowledge necessary to practice addiction psychiatry to enable you to assume a leadership position in the field.

Your training gives you clinical experience in diagnostic and therapeutic addiction psychiatry, with specific skill development in:

• Performing and recording, from the biopsychosocial and functional perspectives, an accurate and comprehensive psychiatric evaluation of patients with psychoactive substance-related disorders
• Arriving at a differential diagnosis of all substance-related disorders, including: abuse, dependence, intoxication, withdrawal, substance-induced mood, anxiety, delirium, and psychotic disorders; as well as all other concomitant Axis I and II psychiatric disorders
• Creating comprehensive treatment plans from a biopsychosocial and multidisciplinary perspective for patients with psychoactive substance-related disorders
• Assessing and managing patients with psychoactive substance-related disorders in the inpatient, intensive outpatient, and ambulatory care settings
• Utilizing multidisciplinary team members in the development and execution of comprehensive treatment plans
• Using a variety of psychotherapeutic techniques for the treatment of psychoactive substance dependence, including motivational interviewing, psychoeducation, relapse prevention, and supportive, cognitive behavioral, psychodynamic, couples, family, and group therapies
• Intermediate-term, individual psychiatric treatment of psychoactive substance-dependent outpatients
• Psychopharmacological treatment of substance use disorders, including opioid substitution therapy, opioid antagonist therapy, nicotine replacement therapy, relapse prevention, and agents used for medically supervised withdrawal, as well as psychopharmacological treatment of comorbid psychiatric disorders

Rotation schedule

Didactic training

You participate in and learn to coordinate regular weekly psychiatry conferences. In addition, you have close contact with the clinical psychiatry services. There also are opportunities to observe addiction studies with patients and attend various psychiatry and psychology conferences.

Research training

Mayo Clinic has established a landmark research program in the genomics of addiction with the long-term goal of predicting and preventing alcoholism and other chemical dependencies.

The first step in the research is to identify human genes that contribute to the individual's vulnerability to alcoholism. The next step is to develop ways to use the genetic information to protect the patient from becoming addicted. Ultimately, people who are at increased risk of becoming addicted could receive personalized therapy that could change their lives.

To meet its ongoing commitment to provide cutting-edge patient care, the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology at Mayo Clinic is involved with multiple research projects, including:

• Psychogenomics
• Electroconvulsive therapy
• Cognitive disorders
• Transcranial magnetic stimulation
• Other neuropsychiatric treatments
• Sleep disorders
• Nicotine dependence
• Eating disorders
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Additional training

Educational opportunities are available in a variety of clinical settings, including clinic- and hospital-based outpatient treatment programs and the consultation-liaison setting.

An additional opportunity is available to learn to treat nicotine dependency in Mayo Clinic's Nicotine Dependence Center. Fellows have an opportunity to participate in ongoing research through the Samuel C. Johnson Genomics of Addiction Program at Mayo Clinic.