About the Department

The Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota strives to fulfill the tripartite mission of the Medical School: excellence in teaching, research and clinical service.  To fulfill this mission, the Department of Psychiatry offers courses and clerkships all four years of the Medical School, including a valuable third-year clerkship where medical students work directly with patients suffering from mental illnesses. Furthermore, the department offers a General Psychiatry Residency, a Child and Adolescent Fellowship, a Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship, and Fellowships in Addiction Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine.  Recently, the department embarked on a new direction, which is the creation of a new Schizophrenia Fellowship, the first clinical and research training program focused on a specific disease.

In order to become preeminent in psychiatry research, the department has recently focused its efforts in three areas that are thought to provide the greatest potential for discovery in psychiatry – brain imaging, genetics, and applied clinical research.  In recent years, the department has created a new Ambulatory Research Center that houses our Diagnostic Center of the Mental Illness and Neuroscience Discovery (MIND) Institute and the offices required for pharmacologic and psychosocial interventions. Secondly, the department now collaborates extensively with the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR) and the Domenici Brain Science Center at the Minneapolis VA to conduct clinical research utilizing state of the art imaging techniques.  Thirdly, genetic variables are woven into a number of our current studies, ranging from the genetic basis of smoking to genetic correlates of biologic measures in schizophrenia. 

Clinically, the department has expanded its inpatient and outpatient psychiatric services in recent years to accommodate the high demand for mental health services in the Twin Cities region.  In addition to improving access to the Department of Psychiatry’s clinical services, the department has created new specialized programs to assist patients and their families who suffer from significant illnesses.  New programs in schizophrenia, impulsive behaviors (i.e. borderline personality disorder and pathologic gambling), and eating disorders are part of the new armamentarium.  

Again, welcome to the Department of Psychiatry’s Web site. We hope you will enjoy learning about the activities in the department and find our efforts to be of interest.

Charles Schulz, M.D.
Head, Department of Psychiatry