Gillian Pearis, MD
1998-2003
Private Practice Child Psychiatry
Since Brown's program had a great reputation, was one of the founding triple board programs,took 3 trainees per year and training was based out of specialty hospitals(i.e. pediatrics at Hasbro Children's Hospital, adult psychiatry at Butler Hospital,and child & adolescent psychiatry at Bradley Hospital) Brown became an obvious first choice for me. Furthermore, the Chief Residents I interviewed with all had different tplans for after graduation, which reassured me that the program was supportive of different visions in the use of their training and were not necessarily invested in only producing child psychiatrists with a strong pediatric background. When I decided to look into Triple Board, I envisioned myself as being a pediatrician who also could take care of patient's psychiatricneeds, a holistic approach to the care of the child. So, it excited me that the Brown program was supportive of this vision and others.
It was an opportunity to get a smell of the child psychiatry, which I was yearning for during the "pediatric years"and an opportunity to approach mypediatric patients with a wider knowledge fund during the years of psychiatry training. It was also just fun to catch up with Triple Boarders in the program who were in the classes ahead and behind.
There is not a patient I see now that I don't think of themautomatically and intuitively from a developmental perspective andwith a biopsychosocial approach. Pediatrics taught me what a "normal kid" looks like at every age and it also taught me about the kind of impact stressors, psychosocial and/or medical, can make on a child and their family acutely to chronically. Child psychiatry taught me about the fundamentals of identifying and treating "psychopathology" and the impact it can have on the child and their family. I truly cannot imagine practicing child psychiatry without pediatrics training.