UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine-UCLA Medical Center-VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System Program

Program Identity & Fit

UCLA Psychiatry is a large, world-class academic program built around three primary sites (the Semel Institute/Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, the West LA VA, and expanding community/county partner sites) that together span acute inpatient care, subspecialty outpatient clinics, and extensive public-sector and underserved-population psychiatry. The program has restructured into four Tracks - Mid-Wilshire (acute severe mental illness), Greater Los Angeles (VA and underserved/community psychiatry), Westwood (longitudinal outpatient psychotherapy and psychopharmacology with an X+Y curriculum), and Research - allowing applicants to select a home base while retaining shared core training and full flexibility to pursue electives, chief roles, or global mental health (South Africa) experience by PGY-3/4. Research is genuinely central for the Research Track (MD/PhD-oriented, with substantial protected time and dedicated internal funding) but remains optional and well-supported (up to 30% protected time) for residents in the other three tracks, reflecting a department with deep NIH/foundation-funded basic, translational, and health-services research infrastructure. The program explicitly values holistic qualities - clinical compassion, community service/advocacy, leadership, resilience, and distance traveled - over test metrics, and is oriented toward producing psychiatrists across the full spectrum from community/public-sector clinicians to clinician-educators to physician-scientists.