About The Firm
Mental Health Center of Florida and Dr. Ann Monis P.A. proudly partner together to treat Clinical and Forensic populations in various settings (i.e. jails, treatment centers, day programs, etc.) in addition to traditional in-office outpatient psychotherapeutic services, some of the services offered on a daily basis include: individual psychotherapy; marriage and couple counseling; family therapy; group therapy; substance abuse counseling; anger management; hypnotherapy; human trafficking victim therapy; parenting skills training; neuropsychological evaluations; psychological evaluations with various components including, but not limited to violence, anger, psychosexual issues, ability to parent, substance abuse, psych-educational, attachment, IQ testing, and adaptive functioning; supervised/therapeutic visitations. Throughout this Internship program you should be prepared to encounter severe pathology, such as Paranoid Schizophrenia, suicidal ideations, Bipolar Disorder, and organic brain disease or TBI. You will also encounter interesting cases involving human trafficking victims, the Florida foster care system, and children and families in distress. Interns will also have ample opportunity to encounter jail visits for testing and therapy; and in office testing including, but not limited to forensic evaluations, court-ordered work, court appearances, and neuropsychological assessment (see above for more detailed list of services). MHCFL also proudly collaborates with the Dept. of Children and Families, ChildNet, and the Charlee Program to help children and families in need. You can expect to be placed at one of four locations: Tampa/St. Petersburg, Orange City, Jacksonville, or Fort Lauderdale. Location/placement is determined according to intern preference and is not imposed. The program goal is to pair interns with qualified mentors who will promote professional, meaningful, first-hand experience and knowledge in the field of psychological services. Interns will be able to provide compassionate care with people of all ages, races, ethnicities, faiths, genders, sexual orientation, socioeconomic backgrounds and physical abilities with diagnoses ranging from anxiety and depression to paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Interns are expected to complete a minimum of 2000 hours over 12 months by working approximately 40 to 50 hours per week. They will begin with a small caseload of ten (10) to 15 clinical hours and finish their training with approximately 30 clinical hours. Interns are expected to schedule and conduct sessions, perform assessments, develop treatment plans, and evaluate for results of treatment. Following an initial four (4)-day long orientation into the program, interns will shadow licensed psychologists as they treat patients in the office, nursing home, and assisted/independent living settings. Interns will gradually progress from shadowing to providing direct psychotherapy services and will have patients of their own.
Assisted/Independent Living Settings
Throughout the year, interns will be traveling to adult living facilities in the South Florida tri-county area, in the Volusia/Seminole/Orange county area, Duval/St. Johns County area, or in the Pinellas/Sarasota/Hernandez/Pasco county area, to provide individual and group therapy services to mostly older adults presenting with a variety of diagnoses ranging from adjustment disorder to schizophrenia. The majority of patients carry diagnoses of schizophrenic and affective disorders. In addition to providing psychotherapy, interns will also gain skills in consultation, often needing to speak with facility staff and/or family members to improve the quality of care. Interns will be responsible for completing intakes and treatment plans for each new patient and complying with specified standards for documentation. Interns will become familiar with leading groups, which are mostly psychoeducational in nature.
Patients Referred Through ChildNet
ChildNet is a local Community-Based Care (CBC) lead agency for Broward and Palm Beach Counties, that manages a network of child welfare services that provide foster care, adoption and family preservation services for the more than 4,400 children in care and their caregivers. Interns will provide individual, couples, and family psychotherapy in the office and in-home to children, adolescents, and adults referred through ChildNet. Patients referred through ChildNet have an open dependency case in the court system and many of them are working towards the goal of reunification. Interns also conduct biopsychosocial, general psychological, psychosexual, psychoeducational, personality, attachment, substance abuse, ability to parent, cognitive, and neuropsychological evaluations with ChildNet clients in the office, at jails, and at residential facilities (i.e., group home). Interns at the Orange City office location will have the opportunity to conduct evaluations with the Community Partnership for Children (CPC) in Volusia County. In addition to the provision of services, interns will complete treatment plans, consult with various professionals also involved in the patient’s care and/or case plan (i.e., psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist, case manager, guardian ad litem), and provide regular treatment updates to the patient’s case worker regarding their progress.
Program Goals
Within the internship’s Practitioner-Scholar training model, the primary training method is experiential, with the overarching goal of training and educating interns to competently practice professional psychology and integrate science with practice. Interns spend between 40 and 50 hours per week in training of which a minimum of 15 hours to a maximum of 30 hours of the intern’s time is dedicated to direct clinical services. By pairing interns with qualified mentors/supervisors who will promote professional, meaningful, first-hand experience and knowledge in the field of psychological services with an array of populations, interns will become competent in providing psychotherapy services independently. Interns will be able to provide compassionate practice with people of all ages, races, ethnicities, faiths, genders, sexual orientations, socioeconomic backgrounds, and physical abilities with diagnoses ranging from anxiety and depression to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Interns will gain experience and competence in a variety of psychological intervention models and will develop proficiency in the execution of a broad range of skills including clinical assessment and ongoing evaluation of treatment plans, psychotherapy, consultation with supervisors and multidisciplinary professionals, psychological testing, and program evaluation.
For more info, please visit our websites drannmonis.com or mhcflorida.com.