Training Programs at Menninger Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine

Training History

Training psychiatrists
The commitment at Menninger to training psychiatrists was first made in the mid-1930’s. By the end of World War II, the subsequent discharge of millions of veterans fueled the need for psychiatric services and marked a turning point for Menninger.

In 1946, Dr. Karl Menninger convinced Arthur Marshall, the envoy from the Veteran’s Administration, on the concept of establishing a model training program in Topeka, utilizing a former Army hospital as the flagship VA hospital for the Menninger School of Psychiatry. Drs. Karl and Will Menninger assembled a faculty and went to work. The first class numbered 108 physicians, and overnight the Menninger School of Psychiatry became the largest training center in the world. Training of psychologists and social workers followed. Nursing education also received significant attention.

In those postwar times, five to seven percent of all the psychiatrists in the U.S. and Canada were trained at Menninger. The major contribution of the school was a greater commitment to a didactic curriculum, a team approach to diagnosis and treatment, and a model of diagnostic case study outline, elaborated by Dr. Karl in his “Manual for Psychiatric Case Study,” that initiated a broad-based approach to diagnosis. (Dr. Will was an original contributor to the establishment of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders. Today, the DSM IV remains the primary diagnostic criteria used by clinicians.)

Renamed the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry & Mental Health Sciences, the school trained thousands of psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers, placing Menninger-trained practitioners in all 50 states and 27 foreign countries. That tradition continues at Menninger in Houston under its affiliation with Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital.

Training psychoanalysts
Menninger’s rise to national prominence was by way of fostering psychoanalytic education across the country. The Topeka Institute of Psychoanalysis, the sixth oldest institute in the United States, was officially recognized as a training center for psychoanalysts in 1942. At the time, it was the only facility of its kind west of the Mississippi River. Since new institutes need to be sponsored by established institutes, it was the Topeka organization that spawned psychoanalytic training groups in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and have their roots at Menninger. Menninger relocated to Houston in 2003.