Didactic Seminar Trainings

There are two one and one-half hour mandatory training seminars each week: Intern and Trainee Seminar and In-service Psychotherapy Seminar.

The Intern and Trainee Seminar, which is held on Tuesdays, is for psychology practicum students, masters level interns and predoctoral psychology interns only. This seminar is structured and timed to parallel and facilitate trainees’ progress and to follow the development of yearlong treatments they are conducting. Correspondingly, in the course of the training year the seminar goes through several distinct stages.

The initial sessions, part of the orientation program, provide a historical overview of treatments for the poor mentally ill and an introduction to the specifics of conducting therapy in a Community Mental Health Clinic. They are followed by a series of trainings designed to lay the foundation for culturally informed psychodynamic therapy with the poor, minorities and severely mentally ill in the context of a community mental health center.

The next training series is designed to help trainees and interns foster greater cultural self-awareness in the clinical context. At this stage, training is mainly experiential and consists of individual presentations and group discussions of cultural biases and predilections that influence how interns and trainees conceive of their work and how they experience their clients.

Later in the training year, the Intern and Trainee Seminar becomes a four-months-long weekly Clinical Case Conference (for more information on Intern and Trainee Case Conference, please click here).

Toward the end of the training year, the focus of this forum shifts again, this time toward emphasis on terminations with clients and the training program and on related professional development issues.

The Wednesday In-service Psychotherapy Seminar is for the entire Outpatient Services staff, trainees and interns.
This seminar comprises Didactic Presentation Series and two year-round monthly case conferences: Adult Clinical Case Conference and Child Clinical Case Conference (for more information on In-service Case Conferences, please click here).

The didactic facet of the Wednesday In-service focuses on issues of comprehensive treatment for complex mental disorders as well as on social and cultural factors that influence symptom manifestation and treatment course.

The initial training sessions are part of the Orientation Program, and they are followed by a slate speakers presenting on specific clinical, cultural, and professional development topics that are pertinent to work with RAMS client populations. This includes biological symptom management and the use of medications; evidence-based and “best practice” treatment strategies for specific disorders; and culturally responsive approaches to working with minority populations. Being a psychodynamic program, most presentations emphasize contemporary psychoanalytic theories and psychodynamic treatment principles as they apply to severe mental illness and working with minorities.
(to see the In-service Presentation Schedule, please click here).