Grady Health System

The Grady Health System, the primary teaching facility of the Emory University School of Medicine, is a Level 1 Trauma Hospital that serves a primarily inner-city, minority and low-income population from metropolitan Atlanta and Fulton and DeKalb Counties. The Grady Health System includes a general hospital (the largest in Georgia and among the largest in the country), as well as multiple outpatient clinics. Professional services at Grady Health System are provided under contract with Emory University School of Medicine and Morehouse School of Medicine, so that the hospital is a teaching hospital. Grady is involved in training for all the behavioral health disciplines: psychology, psychiatry, social work, nursing, occupational and recreational therapy. Thus, there are many opportunities to engage in interdisciplinary seminars and treatment programs. The behavioral health professionals based at Grady Health System have formed the Atlanta Behavioral Health Advocates, and postdoctoral residents at all sites are welcome to participate in this organized advocacy program. All postdoctoral residency positions based at Grady include an advocacy component. Emory University is located approximately 15 minutes driving time from Grady Health System. The psychology faculty includes nine full-time licensed psychologists, two licensed psychologists who are based largely at Emory Healthcare but also provide training at Grady Health System, and one part-time licensed clinical psychologist who is based in the School of Public Health. In addition, there is an American Psychological Association (APA) accredited doctoral internship training program in health service psychology that includes training tracks based primarily within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Grady Health System as well as tracks based primarily in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, which received initial accreditation in 1980 and most recently was re-accredited in 2022.

Adults with Serious Psychiatric Disorders. One full-time and five half-time primarily clinical positions are available with adults with serious psychiatric disorders at Grady Health System. Applicants can combine the half-time positions with other half-time positions based at Grady Health System. In each of these positions, residents play an active role in supervision, teaching, program development, and evaluation. They can engage in ongoing research related to suicidal behavior, PTSD, bipolar disorder, psychosis and including schizophrenia spectrum disorders and substance abuse, as well as program evaluation.

1. Grady Outpatient Services – Cognitive Behavioral Social Skills Training (CBSST) service, which provides psychosocial and psychiatric diagnostic assessments as well as group and individual adaptive functioning goal-attainment and recovery-focused evidence-based treatment (EBT) interventions for adult individuals with symptoms of and/or diagnosed with serious mental illness (SMI) conditions. The resident will take on the primary administrative, training, supervisory, clinical service delivery, program development and clinical-research coordinator leadership roles for the service.
2. Grady Outpatient Services - Bipolar Clinic and Research Program (BCRP), which provides comprehensive biopsychosocial and diagnostic assessments, treatment plans and brief, goal-oriented individual therapy for adult outpatients diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The resident will take a leadership role in providing administrative and clinical services including group therapy and participating in a clinical-research study examining the roles of genetics/epigenetics, adverse childhood experiences, as well as other risk/protective factors for suicidal behaviors in individuals with bipolar disorder. The resident will also conduct diagnostic assessments for patients with various symptoms and disorders and provide supervision to psychology graduate students.
3. Action In Recovery (AIR) is a psychosocial rehabilitation/peer program that offers psychosocial rehabilitation services for adults living in the community. In addition to taking a leadership role in providing administrative and clinical services (e.g., individual and group therapy) and supervising multiple practicum students with an emphasis on recovery, community reintegration and advocacy aims, the resident will also participate in research and publication activities.
4. Adult Short-Term Inpatient and Crisis Stabilization Units, which offer stabilization and brief treatment for individuals with serious and persistent mental illness and/or acute psychiatric distress. The resident for this position will be responsible for co-leading groups, offering brief individual therapy, creating behavioral plans, supervising doctoral level practicum students and providing interprofessional consultations to staff and trainees.
5. The Clinical and Research Program for Psychosis offers one full-time and one half-time post-doctoral fellow position in the Project ARROW and Clinical High Risk for psychosis (CHR) programs. Project ARROW serves individuals 18-30 living with first-episode psychosis using a coordinated specialty care (CSC) model. CHR serves youth and young adults 14-25 using a stepped-care model of intervention. These positions provide opportunity for assessment, therapy (group, individual, family), research and program development. These positions also include supervision of practicum students.

Two one-year positions (one full-time and one half-time) include involvement on a comprehensive clinical program that includes participating in culturally responsive clinical-research projects; conducting crisis evaluations; providing culturally-responsive individual, group therapy (20+ groups are offered each week) and couple/family interventions for African American suicide attempters and women with a history of interpersonal violence; supervising practicum students; and developing, implementing, evaluating and disseminating evidence-based interventions for this population. The therapy efforts are guided by a culturally responsive integrative theoretical model that incorporates interpersonal, cognitive-behavioral, third wave cognitive-behavioral, mindfulness, existential/humanistic, attachment-oriented and systemic-based perspectives. The group therapy opportunities are diverse and include co-facilitating support groups (e.g., intimate partner violence, spirituality, suicide), evidence-based therapy groups (e.g., Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Pain, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Seeking Safety, Skills Training for Affect Regulation, Cognitive Behavioral Compassion Training) and process groups (e.g., interpersonal, Women of Color Exploration). The resident is a member of an interprofessional team and is expected to take a leadership role in the clinical and research efforts of the team, which may include program implementation, community outreach and engagement, training and supervision of graduate and undergraduate students, data analysis, manuscript preparation and grant writing. 

One full-time research-intensive position is available for a working with individuals with chronic trauma exposure and trauma-related disorders (e.g., PTSD, depression, substance use disorders, suicidality). Currently funded research grants focus primarily on PTSD, women’s health, pregnant and postpartum moms, intergenerational trauma-related risk, comorbid alcohol/substance use and artificial intelligence (AI) technology in trauma assessment. In this research-intensive position, the postdoctoral resident will engage in supervising/training, data analysis and management and manuscript preparation. There may also be opportunities for grant writing. Research is ongoing in several areas for this project including trauma, PTSD, depression, substance use disorders, psychosis, suicidality, emotion dysregulation, personality pathology, resilience, racial discrimination, physical health outcomes, parenting behaviors and relational health, infant and child outcomes and AI. Novel research techniques used in this project include ecological momentary assessment, neuroendocrinology, psychoimmunology, psychophysiology, eye tracking, attention bias, neuroimaging, genetics, epigenetics and mother-child interaction tasks. The postdoctoral resident also will be involved in the following clinical activities: conducting clinical assessments and suicide risk assessments (as needed), conducting individual therapy (trauma-focused, transdiagnostic, etc.) and leading groups (when available). Applicants with prior scientific writing experience and peer-reviewed publications are strongly preferred.

In collaboration with the Grady Trauma Project, one full-time, research-intensive position is available working with Negar Fani, PhD, on research projects focused on PTSD, racial discrimination and dissociation as well as neuromodulation. The postdoctoral resident will be involved in conducting clinical assessments and suicide risk assessments (as needed), as well as study intervention procedures (which involve electroencephalography, psychophysiology, affective cognitive data collection and/or brain stimulation) as well as MRI scanning. In this research-intensive position, the postdoctoral resident will engage in supervising/training of interdisciplinary team members, data analysis and management and manuscript preparation. There will be opportunities for grant writing. Novel research techniques used in this project include neuromodulation (temporal interference electrical stimulation), electroencephalography, ecological momentary assessment, psychophysiology, affective cognitive assessment and neuroimaging. Applicants with prior scientific writing experience and peer-reviewed publications are preferred.

One full-time position is available to serve on the interdisciplinary psychiatric consultation liaison service working with medically hospitalized adults with psychiatric diagnoses or other psychological challenges. On occasion, the resident also will be called upon to follow minors hospitalized following a medical trauma. The postdoctoral resident will be involved in the following clinical activities: participating in daily interdisciplinary rounds, conducting psychologically oriented consultations for patients being followed by the service, developing and implementing behavioral plans and co-leading weekly wellness groups (e.g., pain management, nutrition education) associated with the Nia Project. As a member of the interdisciplinary team, the resident is responsible for providing psychology-related input to other team members and healthcare providers throughout the hospital.   

One full-time position is available in clinical psychology providing the unique opportunity to work with individuals experiencing psychological sequelae of COVID-19/Long COVID (social isolation, stigma, adjustment disorder, depression, anxiety, PTSD) in the Grady and Emory Healthcare Systems. The postdoctoral resident will lead clinical assessments and suicide risk assessments (as needed); provide individual therapy; and design and implement group and couple/family therapy sessions for Long COVID patients, caregivers and family members at each clinical site. The resident will be a member of an interdisciplinary team including Long COVID providers, subspecialists, clinical and neuropsychologists, social workers and rehabilitation specialists and will participate in interdisciplinary case conferences in addition to behavioral health team meetings. Residents will have the opportunity to participate in the Long COVID Center of Excellence mixed-methods programmatic evaluation to improve care delivery in this patient-centered medical home model and will have the opportunity to assist with data analysis, data management and manuscript preparation. There may also be opportunities for grant writing. The Long COVID Center of Excellence is a component of the Atlanta Long COVID Collaborative.

Two full-time positions will be available in forensic psychology. A substantial part of this postdoctoral residency focuses on developing competencies associated with evaluating competency to stand trial (CST) and criminal responsibility (CR). Residents will also be involved in novel jail-based programs designed to treat defendants found incompetent to stand trial who may not need forensic psychiatric hospitalization. Besides assessment, the training experiences will include intervention and research related to competency restoration. The psychology residents will also participate in a weekly forensic seminar with forensic psychiatry fellows, where cases are discussed, and landmark court decisions related to mental health are studied.

In addition, forensic psychology residents have the following rotations:

• At Georgia Regional Hospital in Atlanta, residents have a four-month, part-time, rotation providing evaluations and treatment for adult men and women who require forensic inpatient hospitalization. Residents conduct 90-day reevaluations of competency to stand trial, criminal responsibility evaluations and participate in violence risk assessments.
• At Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, GA, residents will spend four days learning about the State’s maximum-security forensic hospital and participating in evaluations there.
• If residents are interested, they may also participate in a few outpatient forensic evaluations with juveniles with the State’s juvenile team.
• Private practice: Residents have an opportunity to work on mitigation evaluations with an experienced forensic psychologist in private practice, as well as receive supervision focused on expert testimony, malingering assessments, and professional development. Residents may also have the chance to do cases with other psychologists and psychiatrists in private practice in the Atlanta area who specialize in different areas, such as psychosexual assessment and custody evaluations.
• Residents will have opportunities to attend conferences that may include the State’s annual forensic conference and national conferences (American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, American Psychological Association and American Psychology-Law Society).