The Psychology Staff at the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center has offered training programs for graduate students in clinical psychology for over fifty years. The Internship Program emphasizes a practitioner-scholar model of training. The Program is designed to contribute to the development of a "clinical attitude," the desire to understand people in order to help them. Its primary goal is the development, through practical experience and didactic presentations, of those skills necessary for providing a variety of psychological services within a general medical center setting. This is achieved by presenting the student with the opportunity to work with a variety of patients and a diversity of psychological approaches to patient care and assessment. A secondary goal of the Program is to contribute to the Mission of the medical center in providing high quality psychological services to patients and their families. The metropolitan Detroit area is a cosmopolitan community that is home to an extremely diverse population with social, cultural, and academic activities reflective of that diversity. Many people are pleasantly surprised to learn that the area is home to a large professional community, many colleges and universities, varied entertainment venues, extensive cultural resources, and a great number of outstanding restaurants. The Training Program is concerned with the multi-dimensional richness of all the identities that a person (client, intern, staff member) brings to the setting, including ethnicity, sexual role, race, cultural attitudes, and individual personality within those factors. The Psychology Section staff and students are a diverse group of people. This cultural diversity is a synergistic source of strength, creativity, and liveliness. Students from diverse cultural backgrounds are strongly encouraged to apply.
For the 2023-2024 training year, we will be recruiting for 6 interns across 4 tracks: general internship (2 positions), interprofessional general mental health (1 position), neuropsychology (2 positions), and health psychology (1 position).