Individual Therapy: Interns typically carry an individual caseload of 12-18 psychotherapy clients a week with an age range from 2-17. Interns may elect to develop experience with one age group during the training year but will be expected to have a range within their overall caseload in an effort to develop familiarity with developmental differences across the age ranges. Individual therapy clients vary diagnostically and the training year is designed to aid the intern in developing advanced clinical skills in the psychotherapeutic work with a variety of diagnostic groups. Individual therapy approaches may involve a number of theoretical orientations including different versions of play therapy, behavior therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, humanistic approaches, and psychodynamic therapy.
Group Therapy: (ages 3-17). Interns may elect to work with specific age groups. The range of group experiences include preschoolers with severe emotional disturbance, grief and loss groups, play therapy and anger management groups. Interns are encouraged to develop groups in which they have special interest or expertise. We also encourage interns to work with groups that they have little previous experience with in addition to enhancing skills with previously established or familiar group approaches.
Group Supervision: Group Supervision is provided by the interns primary supervisor. The objectives of the group psychotherapy supervision are to develop the intern's understanding of the therapeutic factors of group process, to be able to initiate and facilitate various insight-oriented, cognitive behavioral, or manual based psychosocial groups, and to be able to apply group skills to a variety of situations and types of groups.
There have been intern classes that were doing a large number of groups and in these instances we have formed a once week group seminar and supervision process to allow for a more formal and specific supervisory experience.
Intake, diagnosis, and treatment planning: Intake, diagnosis and treatment planning are frequently requested services at FSGC. This is a core training experience and receives a heavy emphasis in didactics and supervision. The intern will develop and enhance his/her skills in observation, history taking, and clinical thinking through this clinical activity, as well as increase his/her ability at developing treatment plans and recommendations for clients and their families.
Family therapy: During the first few months, interns take part in the family therapy seminar where assigned readings on theory and technique are discussed. This time is used to help prepare the intern to deliver a variety of family interventions prior to actual clinical work with parents and families. Live supervision in family therapy is conducted in the evening. The family therapy seminar utilizes our observation rooms complete with audio and video equipment. Interns have the opportunity to benefit from seasoned therapists' supervision via live observation. Live supervision may be scheduled at other times with each intern's supervisor for other therapeutic modalities as well, depending on availability and scheduling.
Psychological Testing: Interns are required to complete 8-10 full batteries during the training year; this may be lower if the number of referrals is not sufficient. Psychological testing and assessment receives heavy emphasis and is a core competency in the curriculum. Incoming interns are expected to have had sufficient prior experience in testing to enable them at the beginning of the training year to administer, score, and provide basic interpretations to the WISC-IV, MMPI-A, MACI, Rorschach (Exner system), and TAT. Although we value the usefulness of projectives, our emphasis in teaching psychological testing is to help the trainee use multiple sources of data derived from the assessment process to provide an integrated and coherent understanding of the individual and the difficulties he/she are struggling with. Data sources would include the client-examiner relationship, test scores from objective and projective materials, early history, and information from referral sources. Familiarity and experience with other instruments is helpful. Interns will gain increased understanding of the uses and implementation of a full battery of testing with a special emphasis on diagnostic thinking and integration of test data.
At this writing we are currently providing interns, trainees and new staff psychologists with a six week course on Rorschach scoring and interpretation.
Consultation: As the primary treater of a specific child, interns regularly consult with schools, teachers, and other clinical staff regarding that child's clinical progress and decisions related to treatment. Interns attend formal IEP meetings at schools to provide suggestions for the child's educational and behavioral treatment plan, clinical case conferences with ancillary treatment staff and family, and Wrap-Around meetings for youth who require more intensive and comprehensive services. Interns may also serve in a consultative fashion by providing psychological testing for children in treatment by agency staff and providing feedback about diagnostic and treatment related issues.
Resources: Two full-time licensed clinical psychologists and one ¾ time licensed psychologist staff the internship. Interns have their own offices and computers with Internet access, and e-mail. Testing supplies are shared and kept in a central location for check out. Additionally, computerized testing is available for a wide variety of instruments including, but not limited to, the MACI, MMPI-A and MAPPI. We have recently purchased SPSS for intern and staff use. All staff and trainees have library privileges at the Washburn University. We currently have available test prep materials for the EPPP and attempt to update these every couple of years as needed.
