We are committed to improving mental health services for children and families in Western North Carolina. We do this through the training of competent, compassionate providers and help them achieve excellence within the field of child and adolescent psychiatry.
We are excited to train the next generation of physicians in child and adolescent psychiatry. Our fellowship focuses on early identification and prevention of mental illness, utilization of evidence-based treatments, and integration of care between colleagues in other disciplines. We do this with understanding of the developmental theories, social systems, and ethical principles underlying clinical practice and research. Our goal is to provide opportunities, support, and resources to ensure our fellows can excel in child and adolescent psychiatry after graduation in all settings.
We are looking for applicants who share our passion for serving WNC by providing therapy and behavioral services to children and adolescents, as well as supporting and guiding their family and caregivers. Our diverse and highly qualified faculty provide fellows with opportunities to treat patients from a variety of populations in many different settings.
We invite you to explore our program, contact us with any questions, and submit your application for consideration.
Sincerely,
Nick Ladd, DODirector, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship
Faculty, Psychiatry Residency
MAHEC is committed to inspiring and equipping the next generation of healthcare professionals and expanding access to care for all. Our vision is to create a healthier community in Western North Carolina and beyond.
The didactic curriculum provides an overview of the psychiatric field of knowledge and the many other topic areas that affect the delivery of psychiatric care. This includes the fundamentals of the child and adolescent psychiatric interview along with utilization of different models of formulation. Development will also be covered, including the multiple facets of normal and abnormal development. For each psychiatric disorder, we will cover the diagnostic criteria, clinical presentation, pathophysiology, epidemiology, natural course, preventive approaches, psychopharmacology, and non-pharmacologic treatments of the disorder. Fellows are taught and exposed to a wide range of therapies including cognitive behavioral therapy, supportive psychotherapy, dialectical behavior therapy, psychodynamic psychotherapy, motivational interviewing, parent-child interaction therapy, and interpersonal therapy.
Special attention will be paid to the many and varied systems that child psychiatrists work within, and how these influence mental health. These include the school, healthcare, legal, economic, political, and sociocultural systems. We will cover the foundations of ethical and professional practice including how to be active in the different professional organizations that help to shape and guide our field. Practicing as a physician requires not only the skills to be a good clinician, but also the ability to navigate the business and administrative sides of medicine.
We also recognize that the healing role of a child psychiatrist extends beyond direct clinical work, which is why we have a project-based advocacy curriculum that extends throughout both years of fellowship.
To help fellows be successful in obtaining their board certification, a portion of didactics will be devoted to understanding the Child Psychiatry Board exam. Fellows will also participate in an ongoing journal club to help keep up with and critically evaluate the developing knowledge base of child and adolescent psychiatry.
Fellows are expected to participate in research projects beginning in their first year, with the results of that work submitted for publication or presented in poster sessions. Financial support is available to travel for research-related activities. Fellows also participate in quality improvement projects and study systems of care throughout their training.
The second year of the fellowship follows a longitudinal schedule and focuses on outpatient work at MAHEC as well as a variety of sites, including:
One full day per week will be spent in MAHEC Psychiatry’s outpatient continuity clinic. Fellows will also continue to have one afternoon per week dedicated to didactics.
Fellows are encouraged to tailor their education to their personal interests through an elective rotation, which allows them to gain additional experience in one of their scheduled rotations or to pursue additional interests in a different patient setting.Our outpatient psychiatry clinic, the Center for Psychiatry and Mental Wellness, is housed at UNC Health Sciences at MAHEC along with branch campuses of the UNC School of Medicine and a Master of Public Health program jointly conferred by UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and UNC Asheville.
Our fellowship program is located on the same campus with our dental, family medicine, transitional year, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, pharmacy, psychiatry, and surgery residencies, which provides an optimal environment for cross-fertilization of ideas and collaboration. Additionally, fellows will have the opportunity to participate in the education of fellow learners—including residents from different programs and medical students.
Director, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship
Faculty, Psychiatry Residency
Dr. Ladd is a native of Western North Carolina who completed his education throughout this region. He majored in Environmental Studies and Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Then, he attended medical school at the Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine because of its focus on serving rural Appalachia. In wishing to stay close to the community he wanted to serve, he completed his general psychiatry residency and child and adolescent fellowship at Wake Forest Baptist Health where he served as a Chief Fellow.
Since 2018, he has worked at MAHEC helping to grow the residency class size, starting satellite clinics, initiating an international psychiatry experience for residents/fellows, developing pediatric Collaborative Care, and helping to start the CAP fellowship. Clinically, he works as an outpatient psychiatrist providing direct patient care at MAHEC and a regional pediatric office. He also provides Collaborative Care consultation for regional pediatric offices.
Dr. Ladd is excited about helping to meet the needs of underserved children and families across Western North Carolina by training the next generation of compassionate psychiatric providers who will be equipped to serve community members throughout their life span.
Chair, Department of Psychiatry
Faculty, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship
Dr. Nicholls is a general and child/adolescent psychiatrist. Before attending UNC School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, he was an active lawyer, working for a federal judge and then for large firms in North Carolina and Georgia. After medical school, he completed his residency in general psychiatry and his fellowship in child/adolescent psychiatry at UNC Hospitals where he remained on faculty as Medical Director for its child/adolescent inpatient units. Dr. Nicholls and his family moved to Asheville in 2012 and he has worked in a variety of inpatient, outpatient, and managed care settings. He is a native of Western North Carolina and when he is not working, he enjoys time with family, various sports, and all kinds of music.
Hello and thank you for exploring Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC) in Asheville, NC. I am originally from Eastern North Carolina, where I received degrees in biology and chemistry at East Carolina University (ECU). I then completed my medical degree at ECU’s Brody School of Medicine.
I am honored to now be a part of the MAHEC family for my psychiatry residency. I was drawn to this program for its blend of excellence in training with the unique collegial and benevolent atmosphere that I craved. I additionally chose the city of Asheville for its natural beauty, thriving social community, and incredible diversity of culture and thought.
A medical career was always within my plan, but psychiatry captured my interest more recently as I consider it to be the most interesting, challenging, and creative branch of medicine. As Pulitzer prize-winning political pundit and psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer said, psychiatry “combines the practicality of medicine and the elegance of philosophy.” Our residency was created to address the grave need for mental health services in Western North Carolina, and I personally hope to remain in this area for my career. My further interest is the changing economic and political landscape of medicine and I am completing a Master's in Business Administration to focus on this topic.
My interests include outdoor activities such as hiking, whitewater rafting, and mountain biking, which I have found in abundance around Asheville. I love all sports, though tennis is my favorite. I play piano and enjoy reading, film, and exploring Asheville’s thriving restaurant and beer scenes with friends and family.
Dr. Nina Leezenbaum is a licensed psychologist. She received her PhD in developmental and clinical
psychology from the University of Pittsburgh and completed her APA Internship and post-doctoral
training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently an Assistant Professor at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Department of Psychiatry and serves as the
Clinical Director of the UNC TEACCH Autism Program in Asheville. Dr. Leezenbaum specializes in
diagnosis, assessment, and intervention for individuals on the autism spectrum. She provides clinical
supervision and mentorship to students, residents, and fellows and trains professionals worldwide
on the fundamentals of autism and evidence-based techniques. Her specific clinical and research
expertise is focused on autism in infancy and early childhood as well as parent child interactions. Dr.
Leezenbaum has authored several peer-reviewed publications in the field of autism and
developmental disabilities.
Sarah Wells Slectha, MD, received her undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she was a Morehead Scholar. She participated in medical volunteer work abroad immediately after college and then completed an AmeriCorps service program before beginning medical school at the UNC School of Medicine. Dr. Wells completed her general psychiatry residency and a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at UNC Hospitals. While there, she developed a love for teaching and was awarded the Kaiser Permanente Excellence in Teaching Award for Residents.
Sarah is currently an adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine as well as the course director for the longitudinal curriculum of the psychiatry third-year clerkship at the Asheville campus. She is a full member of the UNC School of Medicine’s Academy of Educators and is a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
Dr. Wells enjoys providing medication management and psychotherapy for children, adolescents, and adults in a variety of settings. She has a special interest in working with girls in a therapeutic boarding school setting. In her spare time, Sarah enjoys travel, hiking, dance, and spending time with family.
Melissa is the co-founder of Healing Together Counseling, PLLC, and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and Licensed Clinical Addiction Specialist (LCAS) in North Carolina. Melissa is certified in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and has years of experience working with children, adolescents, families, and adults in residential, home, school, and office settings. Melissa has a special interest in working with clients who have experienced complex trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, personality disorders, and military-related mental health symptoms. She also utilizes CBT, EMDR, and DBT treatment with individuals, groups, and families. Melissa is an ally for the LGBTQIA+ community and is actively educating herself and others on anti-racist principles to better support BIPOC clients. Melissa enjoys spending time with her family, friends, and cats. She is an avid reader and enjoys watching TV, especially crime and medical dramas. She takes joy in getting outdoors exploring the area and traveling.
Hey y’all- I’m Gabi Terán, and I am over the moon to be joining MAHEC and be a part of the Asheville community. I grew up in Charlotte, NC (before it was a thriving metropolis) and went to undergrad at Virginia Tech where I started to foster my love for living in the mountains. I took a few years off between undergrad and medical school where I did a bunch of different and important things ranging from working retail to working at a ranch to living in Nepal to learning that bench research was not for me!
I always thought I would end up as an OB-Gyn as I have such a strong passion for women’s health. However, it just wasn’t the right fit for me and once rotating, I knew that I was not an OB-Gyn in my core. However, once I rotated in Internal Medicine I found myself consistently presenting to my attendings about the psychiatric conditions of the floor patients, as to me this felt like the real root of their hospitalizations; it was clear I was meant to pursue psychiatry. I hope to pursue issues that disproportionately affect women such as intimate partner violence, sexual assault/rape, post-partum pathologies, and disordered eating through a psychiatric lens.
In my free time I enjoy fermentation, gardening, hiking with my dog goose, and knitting is a new hobby I’ve picked up.
Howdy. My name is Angus, and I am excited to be joining MAHEC Psychiatry program. I grew up in Hendersonville, so this is a homecoming of sorts. I’ve done a few things before medicine, including working as both a high school English teacher and as a registered nurse. I graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine (recently), and I also have a Master of Fine Arts from Iowa Writers’ Workshop (much, much less recently).
Psychiatry is about the story, the narrative of one’s lived life. Helping folks understand their own narratives and their power to change them is a pretty big draw for me.
In my spare time, I enjoy recounting in excruciating detail European football matches to my wife while we hike. I’m also a fan of pub trivia, dogs, and the good novel.
My professional interests include somatic psychiatry, first break psychosis, child and adolescent psychiatry, refugee mental health, and the intersectionality of mental health and the arts.
Dr. Jacobson joined the MAHEC psychiatry residency program after graduating from the University of Washington School of Medicine. Prior to medical school, he attended the University of Utah and earned a doctorate degree in physical therapy. While working as an outpatient physical therapist, he completed additional training to obtain board certification as an orthopedic clinical specialist. His clinical interests include child and adolescent psychiatry, veteran mental health, and psychotherapy.
Applicants must have satisfactorily completed a Psychiatry residency program or sufficient residency training to meet residency graduation requirements upon completing the first year of fellowship, have DEA certification, and be eligible to obtain a license to practice medicine in North Carolina through the North Carolina Medical Board. Additionally, applicants will be required to submit:
MAHEC does not directly sponsor residents or fellows that need a J-1 Sponsorship VISA. Non-U.S. citizen applicants needing visa sponsorship must secure this directory from the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG). The ECFMG is authorized by the U.S. Department of State to sponsor foreign national physicians for the J-1 Exchange Visitor visa for the purpose of participating in U.S. programs of graduate medical education or training. ECFMG is designated by the U.S. Department of State as a BridgeUSA sponsor for J-1 exchange visitor physicians enrolled in accredited programs of graduate medical education or training, or advanced research programs (involving primarily observation, consultation, teaching, or research). Although many universities and research institutions in the United States are authorized to sponsor exchange visitors as research scholars, ECFMG is the sole sponsor of J-1 physicians in clinical training programs.
Questions regarding VISA Sponsorship should be directed to the GME office at 828-232-2946 or gme@mahec.net.
Ben Vockery
Symone Simmons