RAMS, Inc. has a long-standing commitment to development, advancement and delivery of culturally competent mental health services for the underserved adults, seniors, children, and their families. Teaching future generations of clinicians to serve these populations is integral to the RAMS mission to promote clinically and culturally competent approaches to working with clients of diverse backgrounds, particularly, with Asian & Pacific Islander Americans.

As part of RAMS' efforts to support and further enhance the professional development and cultural competence of the wider mental health community, the agency hosts two formal clinical training programs (for predoctoral psychology interns and masters-level externs) and makes individualized training programs available to vocational students, psychiatric residents and nurses, and post-doctoral psychology fellows. RAMS also provides training/consultation on cultural issues in clinical practice to other agencies; collaborates with mental health institutions and universities in China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Russia and hosts International Exchange Clinical Training Programs.

At the same time, RAMS is fully committed to the professional development of its own staff, interns, and trainees. Besides on-the-job practical training provided at each of our programs and continuing professional development seminars/case conferences aimed at clinical staff of various programs, there are agency-wide "featured trainings", including the Annual Evelyn Lee Diversity & Cultural Competency Training and the ongoing Psychoanalytic Scholar Seminar Series.

In addition, since 2005, RAMS has maintained a collaboration with the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis whose members provide RAMS staff, interns, and trainees with clinical group supervision, serve as expert discussants at the monthly Child and Adult Case Conferences, make themselves available for consultations on supervision issues, and conduct didactic seminar series on specific clinical topics. Furthermore, RAMS has retained several consultants (Neil Altman, PhD, Darryl O. Henderson, PhD, Francis Lu, MD, and Liza J. Ravitz, PhD) who have widely recognized expertise in working with community clients and provide regular consultation, training and/or supervision to RAMS staff, interns, and supervisors. RAMS also derives supplementary training resources from its Behavioral Health Integration Partnership agreements with two San Francisco agencies that have advanced expertise in substance abuse and dual diagnosis treatment: the Veteran's Administration Medical Center (SFVAMC) Substance Abuse Programs and Horizons Unlimited, a community youth development organization. One of the aspects of these multifaceted agreements is training collaboration: RAMS receives extensive, up-to-date training from substance abuse experts and, in exchange, makes its areas of special expertise available to its partner-programs by providing them with clinical training and cultural consultation.  RAMS also maintains Primary Care Integration Agreements with Ocean Park Health Center and Community Health Programs for Youth (SF DPH) to support joint referrals, cross-staff education & program awareness, and cross neighborhood leveraging of resources.

Prominent local clinical experts as well as nationally and internationally renown therapists, researchers, and authors regularly come to RAMS to present on various clinical and cultural topics pertinent to the day-to-day work and further professional growth of our clinical staff, trainees and interns. For more information and to see schedules of RAMS various on-going feature presentations, clinical case conferences, didactic seminars, in-service trainings, and group discussions, please click on the button below:
 

Major structured program components of the RAMS training efforts include: RAMS Clinical Practicum (for graduate psychology students and masters-level interns in the fields of social work and marriage & family therapy) and the National Asian American Psychology Training Center Predoctoral Psychology Internship, which has been accredited by the American Psychological Association since 1980.

While each of these two programs is designed to fit the specific developmental needs and the level of training of its participants, both are an integral part of the RAMS mission to increase utility of psychological services for the disenfranchised minority populations. Both RAMS Clinical Practicum and Predoctoral Psychology Internship recruit students who have an expressed interest in cultural competence and the vision of working with underserved populations, support interns and externs in their professional development as clinicians working in the community, and help them build a broad repertoire of fine generalist clinical skills informed by professional sensitivity to issues of race, culture, ethnic identity, religion, class, disability, gender, and sexual orientation.

For more information on the organizational structure, training curriculum, theoretical orientation, seminar schedules, and application procedure of each program, please click on the button next to the program's name: