The California State University (CSUN)’s University Counseling Services (UCS) is accredited by the American Psychological Association. We offer three, full-time, 12-month intern positions in Health Service Psychology. The aim of our Program is to train interns to become culturally competent, scientifically-minded, clinically and professionally skilled, and ethically sound entry level health service psychologists, enabling them to practice in a variety of settings.
We are passionate about training psychologists who possess cultural humility and are interested in social justice. To that end, we weave multicultural perspectives into all aspects of our training. We are fortunate that CSUN is an extremely diverse campus which means that our interns carry caseloads rich with diverse clients. CSUN has been officially designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Throughout the year, we offer didactic seminars designed to enhance multicultural skill in working with specific cultural groups. Additionally, we provide over 25 hours of multicultural, experiential training, intended to deepen interns’ self-exploration and cultural understandings. Further, our staff itself brings diversity in terms of sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, race, religion, age, and ability. Further, our staff is multidisciplinary. Therefore, interns are afforded numerous opportunities to learn from and collaborate with our culturally diverse staff members, as well as staff representing a variety of theoretical orientations, professional interests, specializations, backgrounds, and disciplines (psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, and a higher education professional).
Our training curriculum is developmental with increased challenge and complexity throughout the internship year. Interns' applied experiential learning primarily occurs in the realms of 1) clinical work, 2) outreach, and 3) supervision. Clinically speaking, interns provide clinical assessment, short-term individual and couples psychotherapy, group psychotherapy, case management, referral, and crisis intervention; interns will maintain a weekly Triage shift. While short-term individual therapy and group therapy are the primary means of clinical service delivery at UCS, interns also have the opportunity to work with couples. Also, interns will carry two long-term clients. Interns provide mental health consultation and campus-based outreach; they consult with faculty, staff, families, and students regarding mental health issues. Also, interns present workshops and programs for student groups, and campus departments. Further, interns have the opportunity to work with our thriving Peer Educator Programs (serving approx. 20,000 students). Supervisionopportunities include peer supervision (as part of our video group supervision), as well as supervision and mentoring of paraprofessional peer educators. Additionally, nterns may become involved in ongoing university and departmental initiatives, such as: Depression awarness and suicide prevention weeks (Beat the Blues Week), disordered eating (National Eating Disorder Awareness Week), and sexual assault awareness/prevention (It’s on Us; Sexual Assault Awareness for Everyone Week). Interns develop a Justice, Equity, and Diversity (JEDI) Project. Continued development of ethical and and professional behavior is integrated throughout the training experience; this training involves ethical decision-making, professional values and attitudes, reflective practices, and professional relationships/communication.
Vital to interns' learning processes and training experiences are the quality of professional staff providing the training. Our staff are passionate about training. They are highly involved and committed to the Training Program. Our diverse and competent staff provide feedback, support, challenge, role modeling, and mentorship to interns. Both supervision and training seminars incorporate scholarly research and evidence-based practices. Our program is highly experiential and interns are afforded numerous opportunities to apply their skills (clinical, outreach, and professional) under supervision, enabling them to mature into competent health service psychologists. Interns leave us well-prepared to provide mental health services, within a university counseling center or other mental health settings.