Overview: Interns gain clinical experience with short and longer-term individual therapy with children, adolescents and adults, family, group and couple therapy, and/or psycho-education. Additionally, interns gain experience providing community engagement presentations as well as supervision/training for masters and doctoral level students.
Outpatient Clinic: Interns work in outpatient setting on a sliding fee scale. We provide individual, couples, and family therapy to clients with mild, moderate, and severe diagnoses. Clients come to us with a wide range of diagnostic presentations, including depression, anxiety, effects of maltreatment, personality or behavior disorders, family dysfunction and substance abuse. Many of our clients have histories of trauma and/or abuse. We do see clients with long term mental health struggles, but not with long standing Severe Mental Illness. Over the course of the year, interns are provided cases of increasing complexity, in accordance with their increasing clinical skills. Interns carry 15-18 cases at any given time in our outpatient clinic.
Latinx Track: Interns who are bilingual English-Spanish may apply for the Latinx Track Program. All Spanish language supervision is provided by a bilingual licensed psychologist. Clinical training in the Latinx Track encourages the development of multi-cultural competence in strengths-based, family-oriented interventions that address effects of trauma, immigration, acculturation, and socioeconomic disparities. Through guided practice, bi-lingual supervision, readings, program evaluation and didactics, this track offers a particular emphasis on cultivating awareness, knowledge and skills in navigating intersectional identities when working with underserved Latino/a communities. Interns receive individual and group supervision in Spanish and have opportunities to provide bi-lingual consultation to multicultural clients and colleagues at CHAC. Interns will be able to deliver high-quality services to underserved and underrepresented communities with the goal of becoming culturally informed Health Service Psychologists. The program is ideal for students with different levels of Spanish proficiency as it encourages the cultivation of multi-cultural and Spanish language competencies. Although many of their cases are with Spanish-speaking clients, interns in the Latinx Track spend significant clinical hours also working with English speakers, and are integrated into the overall program.
Community Engagement Project: This project provides interns the opportunity to provide a minimum of three (3) presentations or outreach activities focused on community advocacy and mental health prevention/promotion. These presentations and activities provide opportunities to build research, inter-disciplinary, consultative, interpersonal and teaching competencies. Within the context of the local clinical scientist model, applying psychological science to local challenges with the aim to reduce suffering and provide community support, CHAC has many opportunities for presenting research in local settings and/or develop and implement programs and other outreach efforts to the communities that surround us. This may be in the form of being on an expert panel speaking with parents and/or local stakeholders about any number of concerns ranging from child and/or adolescent anxiety, depression, vaping, drug use, crisis intervention, cultural and diversity considerations, trauma, racism, healthy coping skills, etc. Interns may also contribute in developing community outreach mental health programs, deliver mental health consultations in schools and other settings, or engage in active community mental health research. Interns may choose to present their own dissertation research as it applies to the context and/or collaborate with staff on creating specific presentations based in relevant research literature.
