General Mental Health

The General Mental Health rotation is aimed at providing interns with clinical training in working with a wide variety of pa­tient populations and treatment modalities.  This involves experience in conducting intake evalua­tions and provid­ing as­sess­ment, indi­vidual psycho­therapy and group psycho­therapy for patients representing a broad range of diagnostic cate­gor­ies of vary­ing de­grees of severity and complexity.  This rotation is designed to pro­vide in­terns with a vari­ety of experi­ences to ensure that they receive exposure to a broad range of clin­ical challenges and gain a systematic introduction to the skill of clini­cal selection of as­sess­ment and intervention tools according to pa­tient attri­butes and level of functioning over the course of the recovery pro­cess.  Ac­cording­ly, the clinical cases will in­volve variety in terms of clinical prob­lems/diagnos­tic categories, patient pop­u­lations, assessment and consul­tation pro­cedures (e.g., inter­view­ing, testing, independent case conceptuali­za­tion, re­port writ­ing, feed­back to referral sources, etc.) and intervention skills (e.g., providing individual psychotherapy, group therapy, building family involve­ment, etc.).  For cases in­volv­ing psychi­atric inpatients, the approach to inter­vention follows the Recov­ery Mod­el in that the intern will learn to work with an indiv­idual in crisis due to psychiat­ric­ally- and/or organically-based dis­tress with a goal of facilitating success for that per­son in making the tran­si­­tion to func­tion­ing in the com­mu­nity (see "Inpatient Treatment" below).  The broad range of ex­per­i­ences gained through this rota­tion is designed especially for the de­velop­ment of clinical skill as a generalist. 

Inpatient Treatment:  As part of a multidisciplinary treatment team, consisting of a psychologist, pharmacist, psychiatrists, medical residents, social worker, nurses, peer support technician, substance abuse counselor, and pharmacy and medical students, interns will participate in the daily operations of a psychiatric inpatient unit and provide brief therapeutic intervention, diagnostic assessment, and disposition determination of patients. Interns gain experi­ence with a range of psycho­path­ol­o­gy which may include severe depression, schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, substance abuse, and dementia. 

Psychological Assessment Service:  Interns perform psychodiagnostic evaluations and gain proficiency in the ad­ministration, scoring and interpretation of various psychological assess­ment instruments including objective diagnostic, personality and mood meas­ures and cognitive status assessments. Supervised by a staff neuropsy­chol­o­gist, interns may also gain first-hand experience in neuropsychological screen­ing.