Getting Connected through Training Institutes Posted on November 26, 2007 Jodi M. Gonzalez (bio) talks about networking at training programs.

When the fellowship came up to work with Dr. Bowden in the STEP-BD doing psychotherapy for bipolar disorder and not just one kind, but there were three kinds being studied, I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to show the potential benefits of psychological treatments in bipolar disorder, which I felt, at the time, I was seeing it get short shrift. So it was really good timing for me.

And so I focused on what we talked about earlier, but also the learning about the different therapies and that’s when I first met the people with STEP, Ellen Frank and David Miklowitz and Noreen Reilly-Harrington and Michael Otto also did the training and got interested more in the psychotherapy.

So what is of interest to me research wise, I am going to be studying complicated bipolar disorder and trying to enhance interpersonal therapy for the people who either have a history of childhood trauma or neglect or who have a current personality disorder. And looking at how to add some more dynamically oriented, interpersonally oriented techniques to the standard interpersonal, social rhythm therapy; so that’s of interest to me. I still think of the adolescents who I saw who were inpatients, so they were pretty ill, and the host of difficulties they had and other comorbidities and how to address those psychologically.

I was a CDI [Career Development Institute for Bipolar Disorder] trainee in 2005. I believe that was the year. And for me it was monumental, because where I work is in Texas and the primary bipolar research and psychotherapy was not going on in Texas, but that’s really what I wanted to do. And getting hooked up with the researchers was tough. And so that was the first time I really had good interaction and met Ellen Frank and we talked about my interests and she became a mentor.

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