This elective is a part of the Internship in Clinical Psychology. This predoctoral internship is open to matriculated doctoral students enrolled in clinical or counseling psychology programs.
The Child Clinical Psychology Elective has a long history of providing outstanding generalist training in working with children, adolescents and families through MassGeneral for Children with opportunities for specialization in therapy, neuropsychological assessment, or research-oriented careers. Within the therapy concentration, there are also several elective opportunities to focus on special populations.
Child track interns gain experience in diagnostic assessment, pediatric neuropsychological evaluation, integrative and cognitive-behavioral therapy, family therapy, short-term interventions in an acute setting, consultation, and research. They participate in didactics with interns from other tracks, as well as attend seminars specific to pediatric and family work. Across all clinical experiences, there is an emphasis on training interns to provide evidence-based services to diverse populations of children and families in an academic medical center.
Interns in the Child Clinical Psychology Elective spend approximately half of their direct clinic services time in the Child Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic. This patient population is economically and culturally diverse and includes children and families with multiple psychological, social, and medical challenges. Typical referral problems include anxiety disorders, depression/mood disorders, ADHD and parenting difficulties. Interns obtain closely supervised experiences in individual child therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, parent guidance interventions and family therapy. There is frequent collaboration with child psychiatry fellows for treatment and case management. Intern caseloads are determined depending on their areas of interest and focus.
Additionally, interns have the option of gaining experience with special populations by choosing to complete up to two elective rotations over the course of the year including:
Interns provide pediatric neuropsychological evaluations through the Learning and Emotional Assessment Program (LEAP). LEAP receives a wide range of referrals for pediatric assessment of neurodevelopmental (e.g., autism spectrum disorder, learning disorders, ADHD), psychiatric (e.g., anxiety, mood disorders), and/or medical conditions (e.g., epilepsy, genetic disorders, stroke, prematurity). All interns will develop greater competence and independence in assessment of school-aged children and adolescents.
Interns who are interested in specializing in pediatric neuropsychology will have the option of devoting more of their clinical time to assessment at LEAP (carrying fewer outpatient therapy cases) to develop greater breadth and depth in assessment methods and case complexity.
All interns do a six-month, four-hour per week rotation providing intervention services in an acute setting. Child interns may choose to either: 1) provide short-term individual and family-based intervention for children and adolescents who are being evaluated in the MGH Emergency Department’s Pediatric Acute Psychiatry Service (APS) or, 2) complete their acute rotation on our medical psychiatric inpatient unit (Blake 11) attending patient rounds, seeing patients individually, and co-leading groups. While Blake is a mixed adult unit, there are often opportunities for child interns to see transitional age youth (age 18 to 26) for individual inpatient psychotherapy.
Child interns have a minimum of 4 hours per week dedicated research time throughout the year to focus on activities such as participating in mentor-led research projects, publishing papers, and/or preparing grant applications for post-doctoral fellowship. There is a strong history of child interns collaborating on ongoing research projects within the department of psychiatry, within specialty areas of medicine (e.g., neurology, endocrinology, behavioral medicine), and within LEAP.
Interns committed to a career in academic research, as reflected by a strong record of publications and/or extramural grant funding, will receive mentorship further to develop their research skills, including through publication opportunities and guidance on preparing F32, K-level, or foundation grant applications. Interns who benefit most from these opportunities typically have their dissertation mostly or entirely finished prior to the start of internship. Interns may work with track directors to choose clinical rotations to allow for more time for research (up to 8 hours per week).
There are several opportunities to stay on after internship through T32s and intramural post-doctoral fellowships within MGH and Harvard.
Example faculty research interests include:
In addition to the internship core didactics, the following seminars are required for child interns:
In addition to the many opportunities for informal mentorship at MGH,
Many child interns choose to apply to stay at MGH for post-doctoral fellowship and, later, for faculty positions. Clinical post-doctoral fellowship positions are typically offered through LEAP and the Pediatric Behavioral Medicine Program. For research-oriented interns, there are several opportunities to stay on after internship through T32s and intramural post-doctoral fellowships within MGH and Harvard.
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This elective is a part of the Internship in Clinical Psychology. This predoctoral internship is open to matriculated doctoral students enrolled in clinical or counseling psychology programs.
