Sports and Performance Psychiatry Fellowship

The Sports and Performance Psychiatry Fellowship provides advanced psychiatry fellowship training for graduates of psychiatry residency programs. It is a one-of-a-kind program and the first in the U.S. that offers specialized training in the mental health care of athletes and performance-based psychiatry. The fellowship focuses on the unique psychological needs of student-athletes and competitive athletes, including the intersection of mental health, physical performance, and identity in sport.

Fellows work at Stanford Hospital and Clinics as well as within Stanford Athletics, providing care to student-athletes in both outpatient psychotherapy/pharmacotherapy and consultative roles. The program offers exposure to collaborative, multidisciplinary care alongside sports medicine, primary care, athletic trainers, nutrition, and psychologists.

The fellowship includes training in systems-based care within athletics, outreach to athletic populations, didactics, and a research project. Flexibility exists to customize the curriculum based on the fellow’s clinical and research interests (e.g., performance anxiety, sleep disorder, eating disorders, substance use, traumatic brain injury, mood disorders, and return-to-play evaluation). Fellows also engage in work with special populations and advocacy for mental health awareness in athletic communities.

Curriculum

Clinical Rotations: Our one-year program is designed as a longitudinal, competency-based experience and offers fellows the opportunity to work across multiple settings, including Stanford Athletics, in the Stanford Medicine network. Fellows will additionally gain exposure to a diverse range of clinical environments designed to support athletes competing at the collegiate, professional, and international levels. Rotations will both involve direct patient care to athletes and also involve subspecialties relevant to common presentations in elite athletes. Learning occurs through progressive responsibility, with fellows moving from supervised practice to increasing independence over the course of the year

Didactic Learning

Fellows attend Grand Rounds and participate in weekly didactic instruction focused on the emerging and evidence-based practices relevant to sports psychiatry and performance mental health. Our program proudly hosts athlete mental health expert instructors from a wide array of elite practice settings and introduce mental performance skills training for psychiatrists. 

Research Training

Fellows are expected to engage in scholarly work related to sports psychiatry and performance mental health. They are encouraged to design and lead a pilot research project, collaborate with the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, and present findings at local, national, and international meetings and conferences.

Fellowship applicants with a strong interest in developing and contributing to high-impact longitudinal research projects are encouraged to jointly apply to the Wu Tsai Human Performance Clinician-Scientist Fellowship. When combined with our program, this creates a two-year fellowship experience, with the second year offering significant protected time dedicated to research activities. 

Summary

This fellowship prepares physicians to function as independent sports psychiatry specialists through an integrated, competency-based curriculum that combines clinical excellence, performance optimization, interdisciplinary collaboration, and scholarly contribution