The Ohio Psychology Internship (OPI) is a consortium of training sites each following a community-based practitioner model. Each supervisor is a licensed psychologist and is credentialed by the OPI.
OPI consortium has two distinct 40-hour a week tracks: Outpatient Forensic Services/Community Corrections, and Corrections. Applicants can choose to apply for one or both of the tracks but interns will be matched with one track to be in all internship year (interns do not rotate between the tracks). It is common for outpatient forensic track interns to work beyond the 40-hours a week to complete documentation or evaluations.
Outpatient Forensic Services Track - interns work in an outpatient forensic agency (Summit Psychological Associates, Inc.) where they provide individual and group counseling to outpatient forensic (majority of clients) and non-forensic clients. Each interns’ schedule includes individual clients, treatment and/or psychoeducation groups, an evaluation block, supervision, documentation, and there are additional opportunities for other duties. Therapies can include offense-related treatment for sex offense or domestic violence perpetrators, competency restoration, substance abuse, and/or general mental health clients. Interns gain significant experience in forensic assessments, including but not limited to NGRI, Competency to Stand Trial, Fitness-for-Duty and Pre-Employment evaluations. Additional opportunities can include being the liaison for a domestic violence misdemeanor diversion court program as well as participate in additional forensic evaluations outside of their evaluation block. Most evaluations do not include testing aside from MMPI-3. Some interns work a few hours a week with Oriana House, a community based correctional facility, where they provide brief therapy and crisis services to forensic clients. Some interns provide mental health and substance abuse services within the County Jail or community corrections setting for part of their week. Duties are assigned based on a preference list provided once matched. It is common for forensic interns to work beyond the 40-hours a week to complete documentation or evaluations.
Corrections Track - Interns in the State Prison sites gain experience working with incarcerated persons at several Ohio based prisons including the Lorain Correctional Institution (LorCI) and Grafton Correctional Institution (GCI). LorCI is a male correctional reception center where incarcerated persons are evaluated and classified with respect to security level and healthcare needs prior to their placement at a parent facility. Services in this setting focus on mental health evaluations, brief therapeutic interventions, and crisis risk assessments. Grafton Correctional Complex is a medium-minimum security male facility that has multiple missions including a Residential Treatment Unit, outpatient services, and a correctional camp. Interns will spend their internship year split between both facilities, completing a 6-month rotation at each facility. Both correctional sites will provide the interns the opportunity to gain competency in completing mental health evaluations, psychological testing, crisis risk assessments, suicide prevention activities, group therapy, training opportunities, brief and long-term psychotherapy, completing assessments and treatment for individuals with a wide variety of clinical presentations while working in a multidisciplinary setting.
In both tracks, interns attend individual and group supervision and have documentation time in their schedules. Interns have the opportunity to interact as a consortium by engaging in weekly supervision, quarterly gatherings, and didactics twice monthly as a consortium. There are opportunities to receive additional didactic training within the track. Interns are provided with 100 hours of didactic training seminars including training on Psychology of Sex Offenders, sex offense treatment, forensic assessments, multiculturalism, supervision, providing expert witness testimony and others. Though most didactics are conducted via Microsoft Teams, interns will travel between sites at least quarterly for didactics or other activities. Interns can also have the opportunity to act as a Chief Intern or Co-Chief Intern.
Our APA accreditation status is APA-accredited, on probation. We are scheduled for a review of this status after the 2024-25 internship year has already started, which means the accreditation status that our 2024-25 interns can use when applying to future endeavors is currently unknown. Though we are committed to restoring our accreditation status, this cannot be promised.
**Please note that we previously had an Inpatient Track, but we regret to inform you that Heartland Behavioral Healthcare (HBH) had to withdraw and will be unable to recruit for the upcoming year. OPI is not offering the Inpatient Track for the 2024-25 training year.**