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CENTER FOR BEHAVIORAL HEALTH

• Center for Behavioral Medicine is one of five partner hospitals in the UMKC School of Medicine (SOM) teaching hospital consortium.  The other four hospitals are Children’s Mercy Hospital, St.Luke’s Hospital and Truman Medical Center’s campuses on Hospital Hill and at Lakewood.
• For over fifty years, the Center for Behavioral Medicine has served as the community’s “safety net” for psychiatric care.  All income levels are represented in the patient population, although a significant number have limited income or are indigent.
• Center for Behavioral Medicine represents a unique collaboration between state-funded (Department of Mental Health, or DMH) hospital and an academic center (UMKC School of Medicine).  The psychiatrists and psychologists employed by CBM and who teach and conduct research at the hospital are faculty members in the Department of Psychiatry. 
• Center for Behavioral Medicine and the Department of Psychiatry play a central role in undergraduate medical education.  The curriculum creates a convergence with medical students at three points in the six-year curriculum, involving three hundred students each year.
• Center for Behavioral Medicine is the primary site for the Department of Psychiatry’s residency training program.  Twenty-four residents (six in each post graduate year) are engaged in a four-year training pathway from medical school graduation to the practice of psychiatry.  CBM also offers postgraduate training programs in psychology and psycho-pharmacy. The training programs have attracted excellent clinicians who have provided high quality care to thousands of patients, trained generations of mental health professionals and contributed, through research and professional publications, to the body of medical knowledge.
• Faculty members in the Department of Psychiatry are currently engaged in four federally funded research grants, and a host of projects funded through other sources.  The areas of this research include clinical trials of medications to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and methamphetamine addiction, methods of suicide prevention, and community-based crisis intervention.