The Department of Psychiatry provides Northeastern Ohio with a major psychiatric center, and offers a unique combination of academic excellence with a high level of public service. A full range of psychiatric services is made available to a highly diverse patient population. Teaching wards admit over 25,000 patients per year to the Medical Center Campus, over 600 to the inpatient psychiatry unit, while outpatient visits number approximately 28,000 annually. From an academic perspective, the Department is dedicated to high standards of treatment, teaching, and research.

Among the top rated medical schools in the country, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has a long tradition of excellence in psychiatric education. The faculty at Case Western Reserve University/MetroHealth Medical Center are full-time academicians whose primary activity involves the teaching and supervision of psychiatric residents.

The Program is well structured, broad, and highly diversified. The faculty are experts in a variety of psychiatric subspecialties: addiction psychiatry, psychopharmacology, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, child and adolescent psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, mental retardation, consultation-liaison and biological research. Emphasis is placed on the teaching of psychodynamics and psychobiology. This dual approach is explicitly integrated into the didactic and clinical curriculum of the Program. The teaching methodology is elaborately structured to provide the psychiatrist-in-training with a solid foundation in medical and psychological concepts of abnormal behavior.

The Division of Education within the Department sponsors intensive clinical teaching for junior and senior medical students, which has made MetroHealth Medical Center a preferred teaching site.