Welcome to the UCLA Family! 

Those of you that are considering a career in Psychiatry need to prepare for the most challenging and rapidly changing discipline in the field of medicine.  The scientific advances in the neurosciences, molecular biology, and pharmacology of the last three decades will continue to accrue at an even greater rate in the next three decades.  We foresee that the serious mental illnesses will yield to a greater understanding of their origins, mechanisms, and treatment during the next several decades of the new millennium.

The psychiatrists of the future will need to utilize this expanding knowledge.  Any training program, therefore, must lay a foundation for a lifetime of learning and an ability to assimilate and apply new knowledge throughout their career. 

It is the philosophy of this program that as with the psychiatrists of the past and present, the psychiatrists of the future must have a deep understanding of the bio-psycho-social forces underlying human behavior.  To this end, we have made every effort to present our trainees with a well balanced curriculum that encompasses the diverse frontiers of psychiatry, from the art of psychotherapy to the science of psychopharmacology and neurological development.

I welcome you to the exciting world of psychiatry!

Peter Whybrow, MD

Professor and Executive Chairman

Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

UCLA School of Medicine