Doctoral Psychology Internship

Our program offers the capstone experience in doctoral psychology. We are accredited, on contingency, through the American Psychological Association.

We give you in-depth clinical training with a developmental focus on serious mental illness. Our internship has three main goals:

1. Prepare you for a career as a psychologist in a variety of academic, clinical and research settings in both the public and private sectors.
2. Provide you with the foundation to become an expert in understanding and treating mental illnesses, including psychotic, affective and anxiety disorders.
3. Provide you with advanced training in assessment, diagnosis and evaluation, as well as exposure to numerous intervention and treatment modalities.

The University at Buffalo Department of Psychiatry is deeply committed to fostering multicultural competence and diversity awareness and appreciation. The primary mission of all of our training activities is to develop interns that have expertise in using a developmental approach to understanding and treating psychopathology. We take seriously the need to remain sensitive in all clinical work to diversity and individual differences. In doing so, we define diversity factors broadly, including but not limited to differences in race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status, nationality, and primary language.

The program engages in an ongoing process of improvement with regard to multicultural competence and diversity. In addition to informal discussions among training faculty and interns, we also rely upon formal consultation and involvement in our Psychiatry Department’s Diversity Committee. This Committee is made up of psychologists, psychiatrists, and staff who are tasked with evaluating and improving the Department’s and its programs’ commitment to developing increased awareness, knowledge, and skills to work with our highly diverse patient population. This Departmental Committee also maintains a key role in informing searches for new faculty and staff hires. Another notable formal activity is consultation with our Internship program’s Diversity Committee, made up of faculty and trainees. This Committee is tasked in part with conducting ongoing evaluation of the program’s environment, and its related efforts to attract, support, and retain diverse trainees. Interested interns are invited to serve as Diversity Committee members for their internship training year.

The Internship program offers a didactics program that includes some diversity-specific topics, and encourages faculty to infuse diversity discussion into all educational sessions. Two of the regular diversity-specific activities are a monthly Journal Club, which is led by either faculty or trainees, and involves reading and discussing articles that have diversity as a primary content area. The second series is focused on structural competency, and involves both traditional didactics, as well as immersion and experiential activities in the community. Outside of the didactic program, interns are engaged in individual and group supervision, where faculty are actively encouraged to incorporate discussion of diversity factors in developing case conceptualizations, and conducting formal assessment and psychotherapy.

The University at Buffalo Department of Psychiatry serves children, adults, and families from a highly diverse area, including the city of Buffalo, its surrounding suburbs, and more remote rural locations. The city of Buffalo and its surrounding suburbs are highly diverse, which allows for our trainees to have opportunities to provide services to patients from a wide variety of backgrounds, including populations that are typically grossly underserved. In working with a very diverse patient population in a diverse community, supplemented with the various educational activities offered by the program, we aim to help interns develop their appreciation of diversity broadly defined, and their ability to work with individuals and families in ways that are culturally competent.