The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences is composed of programs located at several different geographic sites, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; San Francisco Veteran Affairs Medical Center; UCSF Medical Centers at Parnassus Heights, Mount Zion, and Mission Bay; UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals in Oakland and San Francisco; clinical and research programs at UCSF's Parnassus Heights, Mount Zion, and Mission Bay campuses; and community-based programs located throughout the Bay Area and Northern California. Training is provided by more than 340 full-time faculty members and over 200 volunteer clinical faculty to 600 medical students, 63 general psychiatry residents, 26 psychiatry fellows, and more than 115 pre- and postdoctoral trainees in clinical psychology, social work, nursing, rehabilitation therapy, genetics, and neuroscience.
Throughout its history, the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences has held a strong commitment to basic and clinical research training, and currently sponsors a number of pre- and postdoctoral training grants in basic and clinical research. Laboratories at each of the training sites are excellently equipped for molecular and cellular biology, as well as clinical psychopharmacologic, neurochemical, psychophysiological, and social science research. Trainees in the program have access to a wide variety of inpatient and outpatient programs at UCSF that provide subspecialty care and serve as a setting for clinical psychiatric research, as well as comprehensive programs to support and nurture psychiatry trainees interested in pursuing careers in mental health research.
UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building
Opened in 2022, the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building is a one-of-a-kind treatment center that aims to redefine mental health services and make a bold statement against stigma. Situated adjacent to UCSF’s Mission Bay campus in San Francisco's Dogpatch neighborhood, the Pritzker Building is one of the few in the nation that combines outpatient mental health care for people of all ages with top-ranking programs in psychiatry and psychology training. It includes a center for pediatric, adolescent, and family health care, and promotes collaborative research across psychiatry, psychology, neurology, neurosurgery, radiology, pediatrics, anesthesiology, and obstetrics/gynecology – all under one roof.
The five-story,150,000-square-foot facility includes the UCSF Child, Teen and Family Center, with its own child-friendly entrance, a rooftop garden accessible to patients and staff, museum-quality art by celebrated photographer Richard Misrach alongside a community-based youth art program, a therapeutic kitchen for families of patients with eating disorders, and a gym to evaluate children with neurodevelopmental disorders. It also hosts a sleep clinic, neuroimaging suite, auditorium and conference center, educational spaces, and the administrative offices of the UCSF Department of Psychiatry Behavioral Sciences.
Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital
Founded in 1941 as California’s first neuropsychiatric institute, UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital (LPPH) consists of an adult inpatient unit, an adult partial hospitalization program, an adult intensive outpatient program, and psychiatric consultation-liaison services. Originally situated on the UCSF Parnassus Campus for more than 80 years, LPPH moved to its current location on the seventh floor of the UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion in 2023.
LPPH provides a broad range of inpatient and intensive outpatient consultation, evaluation, and treatment interventions for emotional, psychological, or cognitive problems of adults. Each person is provided with an initial assessment and an individualized treatment plan. Current programs include a 30-bed inpatient psychiatric service for adults 18 years and older; an electroconvulsive therapy program for people suffering from particular behavioral and emotional disturbances, including some forms of depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia; and a partial hospitalization program and intensive outpatient services for patients with mood and/or personality disorders in addition to other severe and persistent mental illnesses.
Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital & Trauma Center
The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Zuckerberg San Francisco General resides in a 539-bed county hospital serving San Francisco's diverse ethnic and racial minority populations. Inpatient psychiatric services include 44 acute psychiatric beds, a forensic unit that works in tandem with the San Francisco City and County Courts and Jail system, and an array of specially staffed and culturally appropriate services directed towards ethnic minorities. Zuckerberg San Francisco General offers an active Psychiatric Emergency Service that assesses over 7,000 patients per year, a Consultation-Liaison Service, a Preventive Depression Clinic, an active Substance Abuse Service and Clinical Research Center, and a citywide case management program for individuals who have severe residual psychopathology that results in repeated contact with the mental health system.
San Francisco Veteran Affairs Health Care System
The San Francisco Veteran Affairs Health Care System (SFVAHCS) includes specialized inpatient and outpatient programs focusing on substance abuse, chronic mental illness, and dementia, and offers developed clinical research efforts in schizophrenia, substance abuse, neuroimaging, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at SFVAHCS operates a MIRECC providing research assessment cores on neuroimaging, neurochemistry and genetics, and sleep chronobiology, as well as clinical cores on dementia and post-traumatic stress disorder. The San Francisco Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Program is one of the nation's largest specialized outpatient treatment programs for veterans who have PTSD related to combat, sexual abuse, or harassment in the course of active duty military service. The service records over 7,000 clinic visits annually and serves approximately 1,500 veterans with PTSD. An additional 500 veterans with dual diagnosis PTSD are served by the SFVAMC Substance Abuse Service.
