Teaching Activities

  • 1992: I developed a training program at Hathaway Children’s Village for fellows in child psychiatry at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, a UCLA affiliate. This training program grew under my leadership and persisted until the closing of Cedars’ psychiatric units late 2011.
  • Supervised graduate students in counseling, social work and psychology, as well as medical students and general and child psychiatry trainees at all levels, and provided regular continuing education to the therapists and staff throughout tenure at Hathaway.
  • Current teaching at USC focuses on clinical assessment and treatment on the Child and Adolescent Crisis, Emergency and Consultation Service supervising medical students and psychiatry trainees. With a grant from SAMHSA, I developed the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Trauma Program to teach our trainees how to work with traumatized youth and their families. In addition, teach a didactic course in psychotherapy, child residents’ monthly Journal Club, and present a monthly clinical case conference jointly to pediatric and child psychiatry trainees.
  • In my work as Ward Chief on the Adolescent Inpatient Unit I have taught trainees how to assess child trauma and to differentiate the effects of severe trauma from psychosis. In addition, I have taught them how to use Expressive Arts in therapy groups with our adolescent patients: writing collaborative Haiku poetry, drawing pictures of themselves and their families, and in creating rhythms, identifying non- verbally expressed emotions, and improvising with their peers on percussion instruments.