FCC Tucson interns provide services at the USP, FCI, and SPC at various points in the training year. This assures exposure to a continuum of psychology services ranging from outpatient services through residential treatment programs, and offers the intern familiarity and experience for future work with multiple security levels and a wide-range of presenting problems within a generalist training context.
Our training program provides interns three, four-month rotations in an Intensive Residential Treatment Programs (Challenge), an Intensive Treatment Program (SOMP) and working with individuals with Severe Mental Illness. Throughout the training year, the intern will also provide services to individuals in General Population, Restictive Housing, and the Drug Abuse Treatment Program. To further broaden the training experience, we request input from the intern, as there is some flexibility in tailoring training experiences to meet each intern’s individual training needs and desires. It is expected that interns will spend at least half of their 40 hour work week, or 20 hours, in face-to-face direct service delivery.
General Population/Restrictive Housing/Drug Abuse Treatment Program
Throughout the year, the intern is provided the opportunity to complete intake screenings and assessments, complete comprehensive evaluations, facilitate and co-facilitate group psychotherapy, individual and brief psychotherapy, assess needs of and provide services to inmates in the Special Housing Unit, and develop crisis intervention and suicide risk assessment skills. Given the range of referrals for assessment and type of groups available, efforts are made to match clinical interest and training goals.
Serious Mental Illness Rotation
The Advanced Care Level Treatment Program is designed to support inmates with significant medical and psychiatric issues who have been designated to USP Tucson. These inmates require significant levels of treatment interventions, often on a daily basis from psychology staff. All severely mental ill inmates are all housed on the Care Level 3 Unit. Inmates are provided all treatment interventions on the housing unit, treatment interventions include Anger Management, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression, and Illness Management and Recovery.
Working with Advanced Care Level Psychologists, individual and group treatment is provided to a caseload of Care3-MH inmates with diagnoses such as Schizophrenia, Delusional Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Bipolar I Disorder, Schizoaffective Disorder, and various personality disorders. Interns are also afforded the opportunity to develop their own group curricula, and have creative authority over group topics to facilitate treatment buy-in, skills building, and social engagement.
Intensive Treatment Rotations
In these rotations a unique opportunity is provided to learn the administrative and treatment components of an intensive treatment programs within the BOP.
Challenge
The Challenge Program is designed to address the unique challenges of high security inmates with substance abuse and mental health issues. Under the direction of a psychologist, this residential program involves using an integrative model that includes an emphasis on a therapeutic community, strong cognitive-behavioral and relapse prevention components, as well as the connection of substance abuse to faulty criminal patterns of thought and action. The program is an evidence-based treatment program designed to promote adaptive life skills to prepare inmates for transition to lower security prison settings, as well as to promote successful reentry into society at the conclusion of their terms of incarceration.
Challenge provides introduction to working within a modified residential therapeutic community while co-facilitating process and facilitating manualized psycho-educational groups and learning typical administrative duties of a residential treatment program coordinator.
Sex Offender Management Program (SOMP)
The Sex Offender Management Program is a multi-component program comprised of cognitive behavioral treatment programming (either residential or non-residential), risk assessments, and specialized correctional management services. USP Tucson is the only high security SOMP institution within the BOP and offers the moderate intensity non-residential sex offender treatment program (SOTP-NR) for low to moderate risk sexual offenders.
SOMP provides training in assessing, treating, and managing inmates convicted of sexual offenses by completing thorough psychosexual evaluations and risk assessments, co-facilitating process groups and facilitating psycho-educational groups, while learning administrative duties typical of a treatment coordinator.