Menninger Training Programs

Menninger accepts trainees into the following programs:

The Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine trains psychiatrists in general and child psychiatry, psychologists and social workers. In addition to lectures and bookwork, trainees are educated by working with patients in the real, everyday world of mental health at Houston-area hospitals, taking rotations at affiliated hospitals in the Texas Medical Center: The Methodist Hospital, Ben-Taub General, the Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center, St. Luke’s Episcopal, and Texas Children’s Hospital.

Residents can choose an elective rotation in the fourth year at The Menninger Clinic, where patients receive a broad range of therapies that emphasize treatment methods utilizing psychopharmacological medications and psychotherapies. Trainees are supervised by senior staff members, who oversee their work.

A Menninger-trained clinician learns to sort out difficult cases through a holistic psychodynamic approach, a Menninger tradition that emphasizes an intense focus on the individual patient’s physical status, social abilities and psychological state, in other words, a diagnostic approach that assesses the patient’s complete biopsychosocial being. Patients are under the care of a multi-disciplinary team of treaters.

The cost of educating clinicians during their rotation at The Clinic is borne by Menninger, which provides trainees a stipend.

In addition to technical skills, the development of character, integrity, intelligence and sensitivity to human suffering is critical to providing quality care. Unlike training in the typical psychiatric hospital, trainees at Menninger become immersed in the personhood, humanity and life of the patient. This immersion enhances the resident’s skill set and his/her effectiveness as a clinician.

Menninger provides a proven treatment model that is extremely effective with the most treatment-resistant patients—those who do not respond to the traditional methods now taught in the majority of medical schools.

The defining feature of Menninger treatment and education is the integration of the medical, psychological, behavioral and social models. This is accomplished through the use of multidisciplinary teams that include the patient as an actual member and active collaborator in his/her own treatment.