Ventura Family Medicine Residency

Behavioral Health

Behavioral Health is central to Family Medicine training. Our director, Ron Bale, Ph.D. has over 25 years experience teaching family physicians and treating patients in a medical setting. The two main psychiatrists you will work with are Dr. Armstrong and Dr. Pollack.

The didactic program is very strong, including lectures and discussions on the diagnoses that family physicians encounter in the office and clinic setting. For instance, over the last 2 years the topics that have been covered are anxiety disorder, pharmacologic management of depression, dementia and distinguishing delirium from psychosis. We also have challenging cases discussions along with Dr. Bale where residents learn first hand how to deal with challenging patients and wrestle with issues such as transference, counter-transference, boundaries and malingering.

As a first year resident, you begin with a 1 week behavioral health introduction which serves as a framework for your training over the next 3 years. Over the next three years your experiences include the following: Dr. Bale will work with you in your continuity practice in the Family Care Center helping you with the basic skills necessary in enhancing the doctor-patient relationship, patient education and difficult interactions. You will work with Dr. Pollack doing inpatient consultative psychiatry and also addressing the behavioral health needs of at risk teenagers. You will work with Dr. Armstrong doing outpatient consultative psychiatry and addiction medicine. You will work with Dr. Thurber learning about child psychiatry.

Later in residency you will work with Dr. Bale in the HIV/AIDS clinic seeing patients with a wide variety of mental disorders including depression, adjustment disorder and substance abuse. In the third year you will see patients with Dr. Bale in his psychology consultation practice in the Family Care Center. Your level of responsibility and sophistication managing mental illness will grow over the three years to the point that you are able to handle more and more complex patient problems.

Every one of the family medicine faculty participate in your education in behavioral medicine as you see patients from a bio-psycho-social perspective. Relating to our patients as a whole person is integral to the competent practice of family medicine. We place a great deal of emphasis on humanistic medicine which is so crucial in our medically underserved population.