The department offers course work, clinical training, and research opportunities for undergraduate students, medical students, graduate physicians, and graduate students in allied health programs such as psychology, social work, and psychiatric nursing. A biobehavioral approach is emphasized, which incorporates intrapersonal, interpersonal, and sociocultural factors. Intrapersonal factors include emotion, perception, cognition, psychodynamics, neurochemistry, neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and the developmental and aging processes.
Interpersonal factors focus upon dyadic, familial, and group interactions.
Sociocultural factors include the cultural, social, institutional, and community systems as well as the environment and epidemiology of health and disease. Within its core curriculum the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences offers material covering learning theory, cognition, memory, perception, neuropharmacology, social growth and development, epidemiology of health and disease, psychopathology, psychotherapy, and neuropsychiatry and behavioral medicine, as well as training in interviewing skills and assessment techniques. Its elective program includes a variety of clinical experiences and advanced didactics and seminars designed to further the knowledge and skills developed within the basic curriculum. In addition, the department encourages research and other scholarly pursuits by students in areas of interest to them. Stipends are available for research studies.