The Psychiatric Division

With the advent of many new medications and new technologies, psychiatric treatment has taken great strides forward and is now able to offer help to many patients that will enable them to return to their homes and communities, drastically reducing the number and length of hospitalizations. This is especially important for the large number of young people who suffer from these conditions so that they can have productive futures.

Our mission is to provide a comprehensive range of mental health services at the highest quality, to train psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and other mental health professionals of the highest professional standards, and to produce new knowledge through cutting-edge research.

Providing help to families coping with mental illness is a basic tenet of philosophy in treating mental illness. The Sheba Medical Center has a support program with a professional staff ready to make help available to family members.  

Inpatient Care

Three 34-bed units provide inpatient care with an average hospitalization stay of 25 days.  New admissions number about 1,500 each year, with an average length of stay of approximately two to three weeks.

Patients receive intensive short-term treatment with the goal of alleviating symptoms and rapidly returning them to the community. Each patient is assigned a treatment team and a Care Manager who oversees the treatment. The treatment team consists of physicians, psychiatric nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, and psychologists. 

A typical inpatient unit has two full-time Board-certified psychiatrists, one at the professorial rank, two psychiatrists in training (residents), one social worker, one occupational therapist, and a full complement of nurses, most of whom have advance academic training in psychiatric care.

One of the three units is a female-only unit, which also features a mother-baby program, allowing the affected mother to continue contact with her newborn as clinically indicated. 

Day Care

The Day Hospital consists of 24 adult slots and serves 9,200-day patients annually.  The Day Hospitalization is used to reduce full hospitalization, to try and avoid inpatient hospitalization for the less severe cases or as a bridge to ambulatory care after hospitalization. Intervention includes psychopharmacology, psycho-education, therapeutic contracting, behavior modification, and family intervention.  

Outpatient Department - Approximately 100 patients are treated daily in the outpatient department. The clinic's outpatient services include evaluation, psychopharmacologic and psychotherapeutic treatment, case management, and social rehabilitative and support services.  Group Therapy and Family Therapy are often used to complement treatment.

Specialty Clinics - The Outpatient Department hosts several specialized treatment clinics, which focus on particular populations.  These clinics include: Anxiety Clinic, Affective Disorders Clinic, Veterans Clinic, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Program, Biofeedback Clinic, Geriatric Psychiatry Clinic, Services for the Ultra-Religious Population, and Early Psychosis Clinic.

Occupational Therapy Services

Occupational Therapy services staff provide evaluations, one-on-one case management sessions, individual treatment sessions, and group treatment sessions in the following areas:

Cognitive Skills

• Educational Resources

• Prevocational/Pre-rehab work adjustment

• Interactive Social Skills

• Interpersonal Skills

The Occupational Therapy Service staff professionally supports additional services provided by other specialists such as Hydro-Therapists, Art- Therapists, and teachers (mainly for computer skills).

Throughout the academic year the senior Occupational Therapist staff provides a training program and clinical supervision to Occupational Therapy and Art Therapy students.

Education

Every year, approximately 50 medical students rotate through the Psychiatric Department.  In addition to the regular program, the division also hosts the Tel Aviv University Sackler School of Medicine US program. The quality of teaching by the Division consistently receives high evaluations from medical students many of who return for elective periods and/or postgraduate training. 

We also provide residency post-graduate training, which strives to present a curriculum of comprehensive and rigorous content, so that core skills and knowledge are gained.  Residents fulfill on-call duties during the first year of residency on the inpatient units and afterwards in the General Emergency Room.  The Department of Psychiatry trains between 14-16 residents at any given time.