Our internship program — designed on the practitioner-scholar model — gives you a smooth transition from doctoral study to your chosen career. Our program includes two tracks, one with a focus on a Developmental Approach to Mental Illness, the other with a focus on Substance Use and Mental Illness.
Our program embodies a developmental perspective on serious mental illness and its early identification.
Our program provides in-depth clinical training in a variety of settings, and is supplemented by a rich didactic and supervision program.
You will have the opportunity to evaluate and treat individuals across the lifespan, provide services to groups and families. Additionally, interns have opportunities to gain expertise in individual psychotherapy throughout the life span, neuropsychology, health psychology, substance use intervention, forensic issues, inpatient and outpatient assessment and treatment, as well as family and group psychotherapy.
Program supervision takes in numerous theoretical orientations, including cognitive, behavioral and psychodynamic.
Our training philosophy includes providing ample supervisory support to our interns, while preparing them for independent practice by the end of the training year. We strive to provide interns with a wide-ranging supervisory experience, which often includes working with supervisors from multiple disciplines, including psychiatrists, licensed mental health counselors, and social workers, along with psychologists. Interns are assigned to a primary supervisor at each rotation. Interns will receive regular supervision, both protected, individual time each week (at least 1 hour), along with more informal and experiential training (for a total of at least 3 hours). Most supervisors have an "open-door policy," and are available whenever the need for consultation arises.
Interns rotating through the inpatient psychiatric service at ECMC also can gain experience in providing supervision to doctoral practicum students. Interns are encouraged to partner with students in completing psychological evaluation cases, along with review of student reports, notes, and leading group supervision with other trainees.
In order to help you to enter the field well prepared, our internship program is dedicated to developing the following core competencies:
Our interns supplement year-long clinical experiences with individualized choices of additional rotations. At each training site, you work closely with attending psychologists and/or psychiatrists, who provide clinical and administrative supervision for the wide variety of clinical services and team activities performed at each training site.