My interests are at the intersection of child psych and refugee/immigrant/intercultural psych. I see myself as a clinical educator who advocates for/with these populations and writes reviews/book chapters and perhaps conducts clinical research from time to time.
I'm flexible with geography and city size. If I had to give my best guess, I'd say I'd end up living in the mountain west after training, but I'm open to where life sweeps me! Bonus points for a program that has good access to year-round hiking and natural landscapes. These 5 programs are all vying for my number 1!
New Mexico seemed like a terrific fit: really palpable commitment to marginalized communities and some of the faculty members are basically who I want to be, conducting asylum evals, caring for migrant children, working at UNM's refugee clinic (all of which I can be meaningfully involved in during my 3 years of adult training!), meanwhile publishing, advocating, and speaking on mental health in these populations. Plus, the landscape is stunning with diverse terrains, temperature is pretty mild all year, and it's easy to hit up Utah/CO for even !more! nature (and residents really seem able to access all of this natural glory often!). Training seemed solid, strong psychotherapy which I appreciate, residents felt happy, and faculty trained across the country and seemed very invested in education. A downside could be that there's minimal exposure to the worried well and maaaaybe too laidback? For example, it seemed like not many residents interested in publishing.
However, these other 4 programs complicate things.
Vermont: I loved the small program, the progressive town, the humane mental health care, and the availability of resources for patients. Though I enjoyed the residents everywhere I've interviewed, I think I'm most similar to the Vermont residents. Perhaps sparkliest of all is the Family Based Approach that is practiced in their child psych clinics: wowowow. It's child psych as it should be with psych evals for the whole family and bountiful wellness resources available. Big con: not very diverse culturally. Sure, there's a Bhutanese refugee population, but it's not very significant. Do I pass up exposure to intercultural psychiatry to obtain really excellent, unique child training? Same question goes for Dartmouth: both are very homogenous locales, but should I consider waiting until after training to develop expertise in refugee/immigrant psych in order to access top-notch general/child training? I'd feel a little down pressing pause on this important aspect of my career goals for 5 years, but if it makes me more effective in the long-run, I can surely do it and will enjoy general psych along the way!
Boston U: very well-established refugee clinic, many experts in refugee/immigrant mental health come from BU, strong commitment to underserved.
Dartmouth and UTSW: can I really rank the other 3 over these 2 super solid programs? Both have a diverse array of expert faculty, excellent resources available to residents, and are very well-regarded from what I understand. Both regularly send residents to tippy top child programs (MGH, Yale, Stanford). (Note: the other 3 programs also send residents to those child fellowships, but with less frequency). Could having those names/connections/trainings behind me lend me more of a platform to be an advocate for refugee/immigrant child psych at a national level? It's hard for me to believe training is *that* different among university programs, but maybe they are? Should I simply head to New Mexico and start immersing in the populations I most imagine myself working with? Or should I jive with experts at BU or obtain unique child training that I can take with me from Vermont?
In my shoes, how would you square all of this? Any thoughts are very appreciated!
