About

Seamus M. Bhatt-Mackin is a Medical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University. He is part of the Adult Psychiatry & Psychology Division, based in Durham, North Carolina. His role involves clinical leadership and academic responsibilities within the department, contributing to education, research, and patient care in the field of psychiatry.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Psychotherapist
• Pedagogy
• Medicine
• Medical education
• Social psychology
• Psychiatry
• Applied psychology
• Nursing

Selected publications

• Educating Faculty and Trainees About Microaggressions

  2026-01-01

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Repairing Cultural Ruptures in Psychotherapy: Strategies to Enhance the Therapeutic Alliance

  American Journal of Psychotherapy · 2025-02-04 · 2 citations

  article

  Ruptures to the therapeutic alliance are an inevitable part of therapy. The ability to repair these ruptures is an essential therapist skill. Racial, ethnic, and cultural differences between therapists and patients can increase the likelihood of rupture to the therapeutic alliance, potentially leading to unilateral treatment termination by patients. Therapists therefore need skills to work effectively with patients who have diverse, intersectional identities. In this article, the authors give therapists tools to help protect against ruptures and to repair ruptures when they occur by integrating three complementary models: taking a stance of cultural humility to decrease assumptions, identifying and directly broaching cultural topics, and implementing a six-stage cultural repair model. A case example is used to illustrate these tools and techniques in practice. These skills can improve collaboration and decrease the inherent power imbalance in the therapeutic relationship.

  PublisherDOI

• Diversity Considerations in Psychiatry Process Groups

  2024-10-22

  book-chapter

  Medical training struggles to retain underrepresented minorities through a “leaky pipeline.” This chapter reviews 1) the pathway to becoming a psychiatrist in the U.S.; 2) historical background of experiential group learning, including T-groups, Balint groups, and process groups; and 3) their role in psychiatric training. The authors discuss how diversity dynamics can emerge in process groups during psychiatric training and discuss strategies to anticipate, manage, and respond to these dynamics. A series of training vignettes integrate core concepts and interventions. Presently, there is minimal literature on diversity dynamics in residency process groups. For this reason, recommendations come from multiple sources including experiential group training in other disciplines, group psychotherapy, organizational psychology, anti-racist and feminist writing, and lived experiences. Ethical considerations arising from multiple relationships in psychiatry training process groups are reviewed. Finally, the authors discuss the implications for professional formation and subsequent clinical practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Recommendations for Implementing, Leading, and Participating in Process Groups During Training in Psychiatry

  Academic Psychiatry · 2023-05-30 · 4 citations

  editorialOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Emerging Interventions for Moral Injury: Expanding Pathways to Moral Healing

  Current Treatment Options in Psychiatry · 2023 · 11 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Psychotherapist
  • Social psychology
  PublisherDOI

• The Virtual Couch: a Curriculum on the Question of the Fundamentals of Remote Psychotherapy—Pilot Study

  Academic Psychiatry · 2023 · 5 citations

  • Medical education
  • Medicine
  • Psychology

  OBJECTIVE: With a rise in remote clinical practice related to the COVID-19 pandemic, a novel remote psychotherapy curriculum was presented to psychiatry residents and fellows to address the urgent need to teach trainees how to adapt traditional psychotherapy skills to telepsychiatry settings. METHODS: Trainees completed a survey before and after receiving the curriculum to assess remote psychotherapy skills and areas for growth. RESULTS: Eighteen trainees (24% fellows, 77% residents) completed the pre-curriculum survey, and 28 trainees (26% fellows, 74% residents) completed the post-curriculum survey. Thirty-five percent of pre-curriculum participants indicated no experience with remote psychotherapy. Technology (24%) and patient engagement (29%) were identified as the greatest challenges in providing teletherapy pre-curriculum. Content related to patient care (69%) and technology (31%) was of most interest to pre-curriculum participants and identified as most helpful post-curriculum (53% and 26%, respectively). After receiving the curriculum, most trainees planned to make internal, provider-related changes to their remote teletherapy practice. CONCLUSIONS: The remote psychotherapy curriculum was well received by psychiatry trainees who had limited experience with remote clinical practice prior to the pandemic.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Feasibility of a Novel Online Cross-Residency Group Dynamics Course with Didactics, Experiential T-Group, and Review

  Academic Psychiatry · 2022-09-15 · 1 citations

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Chapter 9. Indications, Applications, and Efficacy of Individual Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy to Specific Psychiatric Disorders

  American Psychiatric Association Publishing eBooks · 2022-09-21

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psychotherapeutic approach grounded in science-based clinical research and practice (Hofmann et al. 2013). It is one of the most commonly used psychotherapeutic treatments of psychiatric disorders in adults (Leichsenring et al. 2006), is “the most actively researched system of psychotherapy over the past decade” (Prochaska and Norcross 2018, p. 257), and is widely used to develop psychotherapists in professional training programs (Dozois et al. 2019). CBT has been identified as an empirically supported therapy for most psychiatric disorders and many medical conditions with psychological components. In this chapter we review outcome research as applied to the major psychiatric disorders by focusing on meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Limitations and knowledge gaps within the current empirical literature are discussed, along with suggestions for future research and applications.

  PublisherDOI

• Chapter 21. Theories and Techniques of Group Therapy

  American Psychiatric Association Publishing eBooks · 2022-09-21

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  What is referred to as group therapy is much more than one entity. Hence, an overview of the theories and techniques of the group therapies requires focus. A similarly intentional effort is necessary for the practice of group psychotherapy because, in comparison with dyadic work, there is more of everything in human groups. There are more interactions between members, more anxieties to investigate, and more difficulties to navigate. There is more content and more process. There is more affect to track. In addition, there are situations unique to this multipatient treatment format. For the clinician training as a group therapist, there is more knowledge to integrate and more skills to acquire. It is a complex therapeutic undertaking. However, when a therapist can make use of the group, more collective resources are available. There are more points of view on any particular problem. There are more sources for giving and receiving kindness, more chances for therapeutic conflict, and more pathways toward a deeper understanding of self. In sum, there are simply more people to consider, and, as a result, more of the complexity that we generate in our interactions with one another becomes accessible in groups (Forsyth 2018). Five questions focus our attention in this chapter. What clinical opportunities are available to group therapists and their patients? What are some core concepts of group psychology? What are best practices for group therapy? Which patients with what problems are best to refer to therapy groups? And how does one get the necessary training?

  PublisherDOI

• Teaching the Fundamentals of Remote Psychotherapy to Psychiatry Residents in the COVID-19 Pandemic

  Academic Psychiatry · 2021-08-17 · 18 citations

  editorialOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Meenakshi Denduluri

  3 shared

• Gabriela A. Nagy

  University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

  2 shared

• Melissa A. Smigelsky

  Durham VA Medical Center

  1 shared

• Keith S. Dobson

  1 shared

• Audrey Martínez

  Mountain Area Health Education Center

  1 shared

• Niloufar Farid

  Duke University

  1 shared

• Mina Silberberg

  Duke University

  1 shared

• Wyatt R. Evans

  VA North Texas Health Care System

  1 shared