The Core Curriculum
The Core Training Program
The Core Curriculum
Psychological Testing Seminar - This seminar gives interns training in the most up-do-date psychological testing instruments and validity data, as well as advanced clinical experience with test data. The seminar covers psychodiagnostic testing and neuropsychological testing, and focusses on the conjunction of the two in our patient population. The seminar is taught by June G. Wolf, Ph.D. and Bill Stone, Ph.D.
Psychotherapies Seminar - This seminar builds on the clinical work of interns, placing it in the context of basic psychodynamic principles. It includes the study of the history, methods, and observations of supportive-expressive psychotherapy applied across the spectrum of psychopathology. Interns present on-going clinical material for discussion. It is taught by Christopher Morse, Ph.D. and includes a sequence on short-term psychotherapy taught by Jennifer Stone, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychology Conference - This weekly meeting provides an opportunity for the internship faculty, interns, psychology practicum students, and fellows to meet and discuss programmatic issues, topics in ethics and professional development, issues of diversity, and clinical material.
Interns' Group - Interns get together weekly to provide mutual support and comradeship.
Other Didactic Activities
Interns take part in twice monthly MMHC Noon Conference, covering topics in substance use disorders, recovery, clinical case presentations, and MMHC investigators’ research.
Weekly Longwood Area Grand Rounds cover a variety of clinical, research, and theoretical issues in neuroscience, CBT and DBT, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and psychology.
Interns may elect to attend psychopharmacology lecture series, behavior therapy seminar, Dialectical Behavior Therapy seminar, or the advanced neuropsychology seminar.
Within the general structure provided by the interns' placements, there is some flexibility to arrange activities in accordance with individual training needs. However, most interns find this year quite demanding of time and effort, and must make choices among the many options for additional clinical, didactic, and research commitments.
Supervision
This internship has a long-standing commitment to intensive supervision by senior staff psychologists and psychiatrists. Each intern is assigned a Training Supervisor for guidance and general overview of his program. At least four other therapy supervisors are assigned as well as special supervision for group, couples, and family therapy. The intern will typically have one-and-one-half hours per week of testing supervision and six hours per week of therapy /administration supervision. The theoretical orientation of teaching and supervision is a mixture of psychodynamic, biological, and cognitive-behavioral. In all supervision, there is a strong emphasis on understanding the contemporary interpersonal and sociopolitical contexts in which patients' difficulties arise and must be treated.
Training in Psychological Testing
Testing is an important part of training at MMHC, and the contributions made by interns are valued. Psychology faculty practice and teach assessment and offer an annual assessment conference. Each trainee has weekly supervision, and the psychological testing seminar offers additional opportunity for presentation of cases and discussion of didactic material relating to research and to clinical use of psychological tests.
Interns receive an introduction to neuropsychological testing and some clinical experience is available if elected. Intensive training in neuropsychology is offered in two postdoctoral positions.
Clinical Placements
Interns' clinical placements include the Partial Hospital, our primary outpatient teams, specialized DBT and Mentally Ill with Problematic Sexual Behaviors (MI/PSB) outpatient teams, the PREP program, the Southard Clinic, the Neuropsychology Service, and the Intake and Evaluation Service.
The Partial Hospital has two teams. One, the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy team, treats primarily patients with severe and persistent mental illness. The other team, the Dialectical Behavior Therapy team, is an intensive DBT program, which serves mainly patients with borderline personality disorder and other severe personality disorders.
The Outpatient Service is the Department of Mental Health outpatient service for about 1,000 patients. These patients have been deemed eligible for DMH services, usually signifying a diagnosis of major mental illness, considerable functional impairment, and no means to obtain treatment in the private sector. This service includes specialized DBT and problematic sexual behavior outpatient teams.
The Southard Clinic is a small outpatient clinic, which is staffed entirely by trainees. It exists in order to provide trainees with experience with a healthier outpatient psychotherapy population. Patients are referred from local college counseling centers, community health centers, and practitioners in the community. Southard patients are expected to need no rehabilitation, nor other services beyond psychotherapy and psychopharmacology.
The Intake and Evaluation Service is the entry point for the entire MMHC system. Interns and other trainees perform initial evaluations and arrange dispositions under the supervision of a staff psychiatrist.
In all of these settings, interns work on multi-disciplinary teams and have full clinical responsibility for the patients they are assigned.
