Community Mental Health Journal, Vol. 24, No. 4, Winter 1988 A Model Community Psychiatry Curriculum for Psychiatric Residents Robert M. Factor, M.D., Ph.D. Leonard I. Stein, M.D. Ronald J. Diamond, M.D. ABSTRACT: The ability of mental health practitioners to work well with persons with serious long-term mental illness has expanded significantly over the past two decades. Learning to do this well involves acquiring a broad base of knowledge and a complex range of skills. Such knowledge and experience must be incorporated into the basic residency curriculum for general psychiatrists, though with some notable excep- tions this has not occurred for a number of important reasons, including money and the new image that psychiatry is trying to assume. The key elements of such a curriculum include 1) specific learning goals, 2) working within an effective treatment system with high quality clinical rotations, 3) good role models, 4) high quality psychiatric supervi- sion, 5) a well-grounded didactic program, and 6) high quality clinical rotations. We discuss these elements in detail, and we describe the training program in community psychiatry~at the University of Wisconsin Medical School Department of Psychiatry. Our residency training program and supervising faculty are affiliated with and par- tially funded by the Mental Health Center of Dane County to the benefit of both. This marriage between the public-sector mental health care provider and the academic psychiatric training program has created benefits for both parents plus a fertile envi- ronment for training future generations of psychiatrists. Over the past fifteen years, there has been an explosion of knowledge in treating persons with serious long-term mental illness. If we were to put into practice what we now know, we would be able to help the vast An earlier version of this paper appeared as a chapter entitled '~l~raining psychiatrists in the treatment of chronically disabled patients." In Meyerson, AT and Fine T, (Eels.), Psychiatric Disability: Clinica~ Administrativ~ and Legal Aspects. Washington: American Psychiatric Press, 1987. Address reprint requests to Dr. Factor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin Medical School, 600 Highland Ave., Madison, WI 53792. 9 1988 Human Sciences Press 310