Psychotherapy is an essential skillset for psychiatrists that helps to improve clinical outcomes with patients. It is a core requirement of the residency training that is done longitudinally over the PGY 2 through 5 years through a combination of seminars, clinical and supervisory experience. Seven hours of protected time each week is allotted for residents to see psychotherapy patients, attend seminars, and to participate in supervision in differing required modalities. These include psychodynamic psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), multi-person therapies (group or family), interpersonal psychotherapies (IPT or brief psychodynamic psychotherapy), dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT) and integrative therapy. Psychotherapy teaching and supervision is provided to residents individually or in small groups, both centrally and at all of the teaching hospitals.

Each hospital-based teaching site has a psychotherapy coordinator who will meet with each resident to help facilitate psychotherapy training through assignment of psychotherapy supervisors and mentorship. Requirements are tracked through electronic evaluations completed by your psychotherapy supervisors every six months (in December and June of each academic year) and reviewed with the Psychotherapy Stream Director at an annual meeting.

Each psychotherapy modality has didactic and experiential, supervised, clinical requirements. Please see the ‘psychotherapy training requirements’ along with the roster of psychotherapy supervisors at each site in the required modalities to assist in your curricular planning. Once baseline requirements are fulfilled, residents are expected to utilize the remainder of their 7 hours/week of protected time for psychotherapy training according to individualized learning objectives which should be reviewed with the hospital based psychotherapy site coordinators to support residents’ professional and personal development. The psychotherapy stream offers links to resident wellness and mental health services including Mindfulness and facilitated access to psychotherapists (see below for more information).

We hope that your training is an enjoyable, inspiring, and meaningful experience that will add to your clinical expertise and effectiveness. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Paula Ravitz MD, FRCPC
Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Morgan Firestone Psychotherapy Chair
Associate Director – Psychotherapy, Health Humanities & Education Scholarship Division
University of Toronto, Department of Psychiatry
pravitz@mtsinai.on.ca
416-586-4800 x7500

Jan Malat MD, FRCPC
Associate Lead, Psychotherapy Stream
Psychotherapy, Health Humanities and Education Scholarship Division
University of Toronto, Department of Psychiatry
jan.malat@camh.ca

416-535-8501 x36669

Psychotherapy Program Administrative Coordinator
psychotherapy@utoronto.ca
416-586-4800 ext 8714