Training & Employment

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Clinical Psychology South County Psychiatry
2024 - 2025

Position: Outpatient Department at South County Psychiatry

Title: Postdoctoral Fellowship in Individual and Family Therapy

Introduction

Thank you for your interest in a postdoctoral fellowship with South County Psychiatry! Our site offers postdoctoral level training for recent graduates of psychology doctoral programs. This placement is designed to provide fellows with an enriching training experience, a variety of opportunities for professional development, and prepare them for independent practice.

Start Date: September 1, 2024 (anticipated, flexible)

Time Commitment/Duration: The duration of the fellowship is 1 year. Full time, generally business hours with some flexibility about start and end times. Fellows carry a caseload of 10-15 families, and 10-15 individuals with an overall caseload of 25. This program will meet the minimum requirement of 1500 hours of supervised experience for state licensure in Rhode Island.

Compensation: $65,000 annually; health, dental and eye coverage; paid time off

Supervisor(s):

Abigail Mansfield Marcaccio, Ph.D.

Tom Sheeran, Ph.D.

Outpatient Psychology and Family Therapy at South County Psychiatry

South County Psychiatry is a rapidly growing, academically focused and evidence based psychiatric practice serving Rhode Island and southern New England. The majority of care is delivered through a telehealth modality, including the fully virtual Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP), though in-person work at the outpatient level may be available. Fellows need to be in commute-able distance to SCP in case telehealth regulations change.

Couple and family therapy is guided by the McMaster Approach to evaluating and treating families. The McMaster Approach requires that couples and families participate in a comprehensive assessment to identify problems and strengths and to identify goals that will guide treatment, as well as concrete actions individuals can take to work toward their goals together. It has a variety of empirically supported tools that guide formulation, and is supported by decades of research. The McMaster Approach is practical and uses here-and-now interactions to help families develop the kinds of relationships they want to have with each other.

Third wave behavioral approaches to treatment guide individual outpatient therapy, including ACT, DBT, and CBT principles. Individual therapy is both practical and values driven.
We use a collaborative approach to coordinate care with other behavioral health providers both

in the SCP practice and in the community. SCP treats patients with a range of diagnoses, including anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and trauma.

SCP is committed to providing evidence based, values driven treatment and training. Our primary supervisors have had faculty appointments at Brown in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior from previous positions, although SCP is not affiliated with Brown. As a result, there is a strong interest in delivering high quality empirically supported treatments, and in translating evidence-based principles to a private practice setting. We currently have psychologists who specialize in geriatric mental health, young adult, couple and family therapy, and neuropsychological assessment. In the outpatient setting, fellows are able to work with adults 18+, including specialty care within the geriatric population, young adult, general adult outpatient cases, and couple/family therapy cases. Training will be provided in couple and family therapy, and approximately 50% of the caseload will consist of couples and families. The remainder will be individuals. The fellow may also develop and run groups, if that is an area of interest.

SCP employs a team based model of care, and is committed to providing a safe place to ask for and receive consultation. Trainees are encouraged to seek input, ask questions, collaboratively grapple with challenges in a supportive environment, and to use guidance to help them grow as clinicians. SCP seeks to attract and maintain a collaborative, supportive and values-oriented team.

Fellowship Aims

1. To provide the fellow with broad post-doctoral training evaluating and treating families using the McMaster Approach.
2. To provide the fellow with opportunities to deliver evidence based individual therapy to patients with a variety of presenting issues using third wave behavioral approaches. There may be flexibility to start and run groups.
3. To enable the fellow to gain experience working with a multidisciplinary team by providing family and individual therapy and coordinating care with psychiatrists or other prescribing clinicians as well as with individual therapists across the practice.
4. To provide the fellow with opportunities to explore collecting quantitative data on treatment outcomes.

Clinical Responsibilities (80-85%)

In order to ensure that the fellow receives a high level of clinical training, the following activities will be required during the fellowship:

• Co-Therapy: the fellow can see families and individuals along with supervisors during the week. 5% effort
• Treatment services: the fellow will develop and follow a caseload of 10-15 families and 10-15 individuals that the fellow follows from the assessment phase through closure. 70% effort
• Clinical assessment: the fellow will learn how to conduct a McMaster assessment of family functioning in a semi-structured way. The fellow will also learn to conduct a semi structured individual assessment interview. 10% effort

Research and Scholarly Responsibilities (5%)

The fellow will participate in the following activities:

• Data collection and analysis: The fellow may assist in coordinating data collection to track outcomes
• The fellow will be provided with a series of readings on the McMaster Approach to evaluating and treating families
• Literature reviews: The fellow will conduct literature reviews on family therapy outcome studies, family functioning, and family interventions in treating illness, as well as any other topics of interest that come up in the course of their work at SCP

Didactics (5%)

• McMaster Case conference (1 per month)
• Clinical Case Conference (2 per month)

Supervision and Evaluation (5%)

Supervision will be provided in the form of weekly individual supervision, two hours/week (Drs. Mansfield, Sheeran) and bi weekly group supervision, 1 hour (Drs. Mansfield, Sheeran, Morgan, Meth, and Davidoff).

Every 6 months for the duration of the fellowship, the fellow and the supervisors will provide formal evaluations, and evaluations of the program relative to the goals and learning objectives of the fellowship.

Values Statement

We care deeply about providing evidence-based, compassionate care of the highest quality to people in our community who need support when they are hurting the most.

We aim to normalize and reduce stigma in seeking mental health treatment. We identify strengths in those we work with, both patients and colleagues, and look for ways to grow and build on those strengths.

We are committed to providing care to individuals from all gender, race, ethnic, and other identities that is integrative, inclusive, pro-social and anti-discriminative in its provision.

We share a dedication to providing a superb, comprehensive, compassionate, and thorough training experience to trainees operating within our team. We aim to help trainees identify and grow into their strengths. We also aim to help trainees develop independence. We value their contributions to our programs as developing providers.

We provide a safe place to ask for help and support, and offer it freely. We believe that growth and learning happens when we are safe enough to grapple with difficult experiences, seek guidance, and learn from moments of uncertainty.

We share a commitment to clinical research and evidence-based practice in both training and provision of clinical care. Because the evidence-base is constantly growing and changing, we are therefore also committed to ongoing learning and growth.

*A Note on Virtual Treatment/Provision of Telehealth Services:

Our intention is to provide high quality, personalized, and superior training in an increasingly preferred and common telehealth format. We offer patients clinical assessment and treatment using a virtual format. As such, your training experience will also likely be fully remote. Trainees who do not have access to a private setting with a stable internet connection may request office space.

Resources

Fellows will be provided with the following resources:

• Access to space appropriate for clinical care if seeing in person cases
• A computer and project specific software
• Internet telephone access

To Apply:

Please direct any inquiries to our Director of Outpatient Psychology, Dr. Mansfield Marcaccio, via email at drmansfield@scp-ri.com.

If interested, please email the following materials to Dr. Mansfield Marcaccio at the email address above. Put “Postdoctoral Fellowship Application” in the subject line, and ensure all files are clearly labeled with your name in the file name (e.g., “CV_JSmith.pdf”).

• Curriculum Vitae
• Letter of interest including interest in couple and family work, and reasons you believe
• SCP to be a good fit for you
• Letters of recommendation (3)
• Transcripts (unofficial)

Deadline: Applications will be accepted until 1 January, and reviewed on a rolling basis as long as the position is available.

Interviews will be conducted annually in January.

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Clinical Psychology South County Psychiatry
2024 - 2025

Position: Intensive Outpatient Program at South County Psychiatry
Title: Postdoctoral Fellowship in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/Third Wave Behavioral Treatment
Director: Kristin Davidoff, Ph.D.

Thank you for your interest in a postdoctoral fellowship with South County Psychiatry! Our site offers postdoctoral level training for recent graduates of psychology doctoral programs. This placement is designed to provide fellows with an enriching training experience, a variety of opportunities for professional development, and prepare them for independent practice.

Start Date: July 1, 2024*
*flexible start/end times available, please contact us with questions/concerns

Time Commitment/Duration: The duration of the fellowship is 1 year, and the position is full time (40 hours/week). Monday through Friday, 8AM - 4:30PM. This program will meet the minimum requirement of 1500 hours of supervised experience for state licensure in Rhode Island.

Compensation: $65,000 annually; health, dental and eye coverage; paid time off

Supervisor(s):

The Intensive Outpatient Program at South County Psychiatry

The Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) was founded in May 2023 by a group of values-driven psychologists (and one values-driven psychiatrist) with extensive experience treating patients at higher levels of care. We are excited to say we are currently the only generalist IOP in the state of Rhode Island. The program has also already doubled in size since its inception, due in large part to community demand and word of mouth. Our IOP is housed within South County Psychiatry (SCP), a leading private practice serving Rhode Island and surrounding communities. The program provides intensive, short-term, acute care for people with a wide variety of mental health concerns.

Our training team is comprised of psychologists at the doctoral level, all of whom come directly from positions at the psychology training consortium at Brown University Medical School. We have extensive training experience with psychology and psychiatry fellows, interns, and externs through these settings. Perhaps most importantly, training has been an integral part of our professional identities since graduate school. We share a commitment to providing a values-based and individualized training experience to trainees rotating through our program.

The IOP was designed exclusively following evidence-based care, and nested within third-wave behavior therapies. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is the foundational approach to treatment in the program, with other modalities (e.g., Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Exposure and Response Prevention, Prolonged Exposure) utilized as appropriate based on individual patients’ needs. Applicants for this position should have a solid grounding in cognitive behavioral treatment and behavior therapy generally, and prior experience with ACT or ACT-based principles is preferred.

We aim to provide client-focused care that supports patients in reconnecting with valued living while coping with mental health needs. To that end, care is delivered via a virtual platform with minimal disruption to the patient’s life. Patients attend a combination of individual sessions and group therapy sessions, which includes two 60-minute groups, individual therapy 2-3 times per week, and medication management as needed. The program runs daily from 9:00AM until 12:30PM, with an average length of stay around 4-6 weeks. With training and supervision, fellows will be part of a small team that provides care for approximately 20 patients total. The fellow will have an individual smaller caseload of patients, but will treat other patients in the IOP via group therapy. The program is designed so that providers have the opportunity to get to know a reasonable number of patients and the team has high communication which improves the overall milieu.

Population Served

Our program serves a diverse, adult (18+) patient population of all gender identities, with the goal of providing culturally sensitive and inclusive care to all patients. Demographics are generally reflective of the broader Rhode Island community. Common presenting concerns include mood disorders, anxiety disorders, suicidality, personality pathology (e.g., BPD), post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, among others. Exclusion criteria include individuals who are unable to participate meaningfully in an active treatment setting, and individuals with primary substance use disorders whose concerns are more competently addressed by a dual diagnosis program.

Clinical Responsibilities (60-65%):

1. Review intake assessments, create treatment plans, and function as the individual therapist for a caseload of 6 patients, each seen 2-3 times per week
2. Observe, plan, and independently conduct ACT skills and process groups
3. Function as an integral member of our multidisciplinary treatment team, including:
   • Participating in daily team consultations
   • Communicating with and providing consultation to colleagues
   • Maintaining consistency in adherence to an ACT-based treatment model
   • Supporting the development of an effective treatment milieu for all patients.

Individualized Training Responsibilities (30%)

The remainder of the fellowship is tailored to the individual interests and needs of the trainee, consistent with our goal to facilitate each fellow’s professional development and help them to move towards their own independent practice and career goals. We offer additional training opportunities in the following areas, accompanied by an hour of supervision:

1. Clinical Research: The Assessment Program at SCP was originally founded over 25 years ago in coordination with Brown University as the MIDAS Project (Methods to Improve Diagnostic Assessment and Services), which seeks to integrate research methodology into routine clinical practice. This project recently migrated to a private practice setting at SCP. It now represents the largest existing clinical epidemiological study using standardized measures that has been conducted in routine clinical practice. Centered around rigorous clinical training, the project has amassed over 9,000 individual participants across 3 data sets of psychiatric outpatients, partial hospital patients, and pre-surgical assessments of bariatric surgery candidates. We are currently in the process of establishing a fourth, largely unstudied sample of patients referred for treatment at the intensive outpatient level,a largely unstudied but increasingly accessed level of care in US healthcare settings. Fellows that are interested in research are welcome to participate in and/or initiate research projects with these data. We take seriously our commitment to integrated clinical and research work, and actively support analysis and publication of our existing data.

2. Outpatient Psychotherapy: Fellows are welcome to pursue additional opportunities within the broader outpatient department at SCP to enrich their clinical training experience, including aftercare groups for IOP patients. We will do our best to facilitate opportunities with specific patient populations, clinical presentations, or treatment modalities in the larger SCP practice in whatever capacity is appropriate and aligns with training goals.

3. Program Evaluation, Improvement, and Development Project(s): Fellows are welcome to initiate projects that would benefit the patient experience at IOP or SCP in the areas of program evaluation, improvement, or development, based on their interests, program needs, and capacity.

Supervision/Evaluation (5%)

Supervision will be provided in the form of weekly individual supervision for 2-4 hours/week, with additional opportunities for consultation available in routine team consultations, and a weekly IOP team meeting.

Every 6 months for the duration of the fellowship, the fellow and the supervisors will provide formal evaluations, and evaluations of the program relative to the goals and learning objectives of the fellowship.

This training experience will be a good fit for you if... you are interested in developing high level competence in ACT; you love nerding out about behaviorism; you have (or are willing to develop!) a high tolerance for interesting presentations, comorbidity, and people generally; you have an interest in learning about how we translate the evidence-base to real-world clinical work; private practice intrigues you; you like the idea of working with a team in clinical work; and/or you are alternately intimidated, nervous, and excited by learning group treatment models.

Values Statement

We are ACT providers, and as such we would be remiss if we did not include a clear statement of values. So, without further ado...

We pledge to make values a consistent touchstone of our clinical practice, training experiences, and professional identities. We aim to hold these values both lightly and seriously, and to not lose our sense of humor in the process.

We care deeply about providing evidence-based, compassionate care of the highest quality to people in our community who need support when they are hurting the most.

We aim to normalize and reduce stigma in seeking mental health treatment, and to provide recovery-based care to people in need.

We believe this care should be widely available and provided with sensitivity to issues of diversity, discrimination, and individual experience. To this end we are committed to providing care to individuals from all gender, race, ethnic, and other identities that is integrative, inclusive, pro-social and anti-discriminative in its provision.

As noted above, we believe these values also apply to the training experience. We share a dedication to providing a superb, comprehensive, compassionate, and thorough training experience to trainees operating within our team. We value supporting trainees’ developing independence, and actively valuing their contributions to our programs as developing providers.

We take care of the team. We look out for each other. We celebrate our individual and collective successes and examine our failures, both as professionals and as people. We provide a safe place to ask for help and support, and offer it freely, genuinely, and wholly.

We actively look out for those who are at risk by dint of their role or designation within an organization or society. We believe the latter often applies to trainees and patients in our care. Therefore, it is our responsibility to advocate for those in training or treatment, knowing they often cannot speak for themselves within the current system.

We share a commitment to clinical research and evidence-based practice in both training and provision of clinical care. It is our belief that as providers, we should strive to consistently deliver treatment that is clearly linked to evidence-based processes of change, in service of patient benefit and values, and consistent with our values as an organization.

Because the evidence-base is constantly growing and changing, we therefore reiterate our commitment to learning and growth, and to holding ourselves accountable to these values as an IOP community.

*A Note on Virtual Treatment/Provision of Telehealth Services:

Our intention is to provide high quality, personalized, and superior training in ACT and IOP level care in an increasingly preferred and common telehealth format. We offer patients clinical assessment using a virtual format. As such, your training experience will also be fully remote. Trainees who do not have access to a private setting with a stable internet connection may request office space in our Cranston location. Please let your supervisors know your needs and we will accommodate to the best of our ability.

Consistent with our commitment to integrative research and clinical care, our group was one of the first research programs to publish data comparing in person and virtual care. Our findings suggest that remote treatment: increases access to people who may not otherwise have presented to treatment; increases patient attendance and retention in treatment; and results in comparable outcomes to in-person treatment (Zimmerman et al., 2021). However, we have been unable to find similar studies on the experience of supervision and training in a virtual format, and recognize this may present challenges to trainees seeking a different experience.

Resources

Fellows will be provided with the following resources:

• Access to space appropriate for clinical care if seeing in person cases
• A computer and project specific software
• Internet telephone access

Please direct any inquiries to our Director of IOP Postdoctoral Training, Dr. Kristin Davidoff, via email at drdavidoff@scp-ri.com.

If interested, please email the following materials to Dr. Davidoff at the email address above. Put “Postdoctoral Fellowship Application” in the subject line, and ensure all files are clearly labeled with your name in the file name. For example, “CV_JSmith”

• Curriculum Vitae
• Letter of interest
• Letters of recommendation (3)
• Transcripts (unofficial)

Deadline: Applications will be accepted until 1 January, and reviewed on a rolling basis as long as the position is available.

Interviews will be conducted annually in January.

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Neuropsychology South County Psychiatry
2024 - 2025

Thank you for your interest in a postdoctoral fellowship with South County Psychiatry! Our site offers postdoctoral level training for recent graduates of psychology doctoral programs. This placement is designed to provide fellows with an enriching training experience, a variety of opportunities for professional development, and prepare them for independent practice.

Start Date: September 1, 2024 (anticipated, but flexible. please contact us with questions/concerns)

Time Commitment/Duration: The duration of the fellowship is 1 year. Full time, generally business hours with some flexibility about start and end times. We aim for at least 25 hours of patient contact hours per week, in addition to weekly supervision. This program will meet the minimum requirement of 1500 hours of supervised experience for state licensure in Rhode Island.

Compensation: $65,000 annually; health, dental and eye coverage; paid time off

Supervisor(s):

Alyssa Francis, Ph.D.
Elaine Walen, Psy.D.

Neuropsychological Assessment at South County Psychiatry

South County Psychiatry is a rapidly growing, academically focused and evidence based psychiatric practice serving Rhode Island and southern New England. We currently have programs in Intensive Outpatient Treatment (IOP), Family and Couples Therapy, Outpatient Treatment, Neuropsychological Assessment, and Weight Management. The majority of care is delivered through a telehealth modality, including the fully virtual Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP), though in-person work at the outpatient level may be available in the North Kingstown or Cranston, RI locations depending on interest.

SCP is committed to providing evidence based, values driven treatment and training. Most of our psychologists have had faculty appointments at Brown in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior from previous positions, although SCP is not affiliated with Brown. As a result, there is a strong interest in delivering high quality empirically supported treatments, and in translating evidence-based principles to a private practice setting. There are both generalist and specialty opportunities at SCP in our outpatient program. We currently have psychologists who specialize in geriatric mental health, young adult, couple and family therapy, and neuropsychological assessment. In the assessment setting, fellows are able to work with adults 18+, including specialized assessments throughout the lifespan with an emphasis on ages 18-65. Training will be provided in conducting intakes, administering assessments, interpreting results, and delivering feedback to patients. Opportunities to work with children and families will also be available based on the interest of the fellow and can account for up to 25% of the caseload. The fellow may also run parenting groups, if that is an area of interest.

SCP provides assessment and treatment for patients with a range of neuropsychiatric diagnoses including anxiety disorders, mood disorders, autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and trauma. Assessment batteries vary based on the chief complaint, although the fellow will have the opportunity to gain experience in administering and interpreting a range of cognitive, psychological, and personality assessment measures. Assessment measures include semi-structured interviews, performance based measures, and collection and interpretation of self-report/observer-report data. Systematic Training for Effective Parenting (STEP) will be used to lead parenting groups.

SCP employs a team based model of care, and is committed to providing a safe place to ask for and receive consultation. Trainees are encouraged to seek input, ask questions, collaboratively grapple with challenges in a supportive environment, and to use guidance to help them grow as clinicians. SCP uses a collaborative approach to coordinate care with other behavioral health providers both in the SCP practice and in the community, and therefore seeks to attract and maintain a collaborative, supportive and values-oriented team.

Fellowship Aims

1. To provide the fellow with broad post-doctoral training in neuropsychological/psychological assessment, using evidence based assessment measures.
2. To provide the fellow with opportunities to complete a full assessment including conducting an intake appointment, administering an assessment battery, interpreting results, and delivering results/feedback. Feedback will include recommendations for treatment.
3. To enable the fellow to gain experience working with a multidisciplinary team by engaging in case consultations and coordinating care with psychiatrists or other prescribing clinicians as well as with individual therapists across the practice.
4. To provide the fellow with opportunities to further develop and refine skills in report writing and case conceptualization.

Clinical Responsibilities (80-85%)

In order to ensure that the fellow receives a high level of clinical training, the following activities will be required during the fellowship:

• Co-visits: the fellow will attend intake and feedback appointments along with supervisors during the week. 10% effort
• Psychological/Neuropsychological assessment: the fellow will develop a caseload of 5-10 assessments per month. This will include creating, administering, and scoring/interpreting test batteries. 80% effort
• Clinical Interviewing/Feedback: the fellow will learn how to conduct an intake assessment to inform the proper test battery. The fellow will also learn how to conduct a feedback appointment during which they will present results, psychoeducation, and treatment recommendations. 10% effort

Research and Scholarly Responsibilities (5%)

The fellow will participate in the following activities:

• The fellow will be provided with a series of readings on using neuropsychological/psychological assessment to inform diagnoses and treatment planning
• Literature reviews: The fellow will conduct literature reviews on neuropsychological profiles in various diagnoses, validity and specificity of assessment measures, and evidence-based treatments for recommendations, as well as any other topics of interest that come up in the course of their work at SCP

Didactics (5%)

Clinical Case Conference/Consultation (3 per month).

Supervision and Evaluation (5%)

Supervision will be provided in the form of weekly individual supervision, two hours/week (Drs. Francis and Walen). In addition, case consultations will be available bi-monthly as a team.

Every 6 months for the duration of the fellowship, the fellow and the supervisors will provide formal evaluations, and evaluations of the program relative to the goals and learning objectives of the fellowship.

Resources

Fellow will be provided with the following resources:

• Access to space appropriate for clinical care when seeing in-person cases
• A computer and project specific software
• Internet telephone access

To Apply:

Please direct any inquiries to our Director of Neuropsychology, Dr. Francis, via email at drfrancis@scp-ri.com.

If interested, please email the following materials to Dr. Francis at the email address above. Put “Postdoctoral Fellowship Application” in the subject line, and ensure all files are clearly labeled with your name in the file name (e.g., “CV_JSmith.pdf”).

• Curriculum Vitae
• Letter of interest
• Letters of recommendation (3)
• Transcripts (unofficial)
• A de-identified neuropsychological report (i.e., a copy of your previous work)

Deadline: Applications will be accepted until 1 January, and reviewed on a rolling basis as long as the position is available.

Interviews will be conducted annually in January.

Clinical Psychology - Adult Assessment Practicum Training South County Psychiatry
Intensive Outpatient, Outpatient, and Weight Management Programs 2024-2025
Practicum Point of Contact: drmeth@scp-ri.com

Introduction

Thank you for your interest in a practicum placement with South County Psychiatry (SCP)! Our site offers assessment practicum training at the pre-internship level for psychology doctoral students. This placement is designed to provide early- to mid-level doctoral students (2rd year or above) who are seeking additional experience in diagnosis and psychiatric assessment.

Practicum Supervisors:

Mark Zimmerman, MD
Molly Meth, PhD
Theresa Morgan, PhD
Kristin Davidoff, PhD

Start Date and Duration: July 1, 2024 - June 30, 2025*
*flexible start/end times available, please contact us with questions/concerns

Time/Day Commitment: 2-3 days per week. Assessments take place during the hours of 8:30AM-12:30PM; reports are due the following morning by 8AM; writing and additional hours are flexible so long as deadlines are met.
Approximately 15-20 hours per week total.

Compensation: None currently though please check back with us soon

The Diagnosis and Assessment Program at South County Psychiatry

The Assessment Program at SCP was originally founded over 25 years ago in coordination with Brown University as the MIDAS Project (Methods to Improve Diagnostic Assessment and Services), which seeks to integrate research methodology into routine clinical practice. This project recently migrated to a private practice setting at SCP. It now represents the largest existing clinical epidemiological study using standardized measures that has been conducted in routine clinical practice. Centered around rigorous clinical training, the project has amassed over 9,000 individual participants across 3 data sets of psychiatric outpatients, partial hospital patients, and pre-surgical assessments of bariatric surgery candidates. We are currently in the process of establishing a fourth, largely unstudied sample of patients referred for treatment at the intensive outpatient level,a largely unstudied but increasingly accessed level of care in US healthcare settings.

Trainees have been an integral part of the MIDAS project since its inception. Our goals are to provide superior training in psychiatric diagnosis, assessment, and clinical interpretation to doctoral students seeking additional training in clinical assessment methods as integrated into clinical practice. Trainees will complete rigorous training in the administration of the following measures/assessment procedures:

• Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV & 5 (SCID)
• Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (SADS)
• Treatment Response to Antidepressant History (TRAQ)
• Structured Interview for DSM-IV Borderline Personality (SIDP)
• Family History – Research Diagnostic Criteria Interview (FH-RDC)
• Rhode Island Bariatric Surgery Interview (RIBSI)
• Extracted Hamilton Depression Rating Scale
• Psychosocial and Occupational Functioning Assessment

Training for the MIDAS project is exacting and includes supervised observation/administration of 25 interviews before becoming independent on your assessment procedures. Assessments are conducted via telehealth, and typically last 1-3 hours, depending on patient needs. During training your assessments will be supervised by a combination of trained SCID administrators at a variety of levels, and always supervised by a psychologist at the doctoral level. Patients present with a range of symptoms and diagnoses, and externs can expect to get experience well beyond that typically available at the graduate level. Students can also expect to accrue a large amount of assessment hours over the course of this externship.

Externs with interests in research will also have access to the larger MIDAS database, and may elect to participate in or themselves initiate analyses of these data. We take seriously our commitment to integrated clinical and research work, and actively support analysis and publication of our existing data.

Population Served

South County Psychiatry serves a diverse population of outpatients, weight-management & pre-bariatric surgery patients, and patients enrolling in our cutting edge intensive outpatient program (IOP). Externs at this site will conduct assessments with adults (18+), and will be fully trained to provide a full, semi-structured assessment with all 3 population groups. Demographics are generally reflective of the broader Rhode Island community. Diagnoses served are vast and varied. Most common presenting concerns include mood disorders, anxiety disorders, suicidality, personality pathology (e.g., BPD), post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, disordered eating, and mild co-occuring substance and/or alcohol use disorders.

Once training is complete, externs with specific interests may elect to focus on assessments in any one of these populations, or with specific patient presentations (e.g., young adults, diverse backgrounds, particular diagnoses, suicidality, etc). Although we do not always know the presenting concerns prior to the assessment, we will do our best to funnel interesting cases your way!

Responsibilities:

1. Conduct semi-structured diagnostic clinical-research interviews (2-3/week)
2. Consult with other members of the treatment team (e.g., psychiatrists) on issues of assessment and diagnosis
3. With support from supervisors and the diagnostic team, complete expedient and comprehensive drafts of diagnostic intake interviews
4. Participate in weekly morning journal club to review articles of relevance to current clinical diagnostic issues

Additional Opportunities Available:

South County Psychiatry is a rapidly growing psychiatric practice serving the larger east coast community. We currently have active programs in Intensive Outpatient Treatment (IOP), Family and Couple Therapy, Outpatient Treatment, Neuropsychological Assessment, and Weight Management. SCP is active in developing additional programs as provider interest and community needs change.

As supervisors at SCP, we are motivated to provide a positive and comprehensive training experience introducing externs to opportunities in private practice settings, particularly given the paucity of such sites in doctoral training. We also expect that your interests will grow and expand over the process of your time with us. In fact, we support and anticipate this! Therefore, externs who are performing well and who express interests beyond assessment may request to learn more about research or treatment in any of these areas (or others) outside of their regular practicum hours. In these cases, we will do our best to facilitate opportunities in the larger SCP practice in whatever capacity is appropriate and aligns with training needs.

This training experience will be a good fit for you if you are... fascinated and/or annoyed by the interplay of our imperfect diagnostic system; want to be able to rattle off DSM diagnostic criteria from memory; interested in what clinical research in private practice might look like; like semi-structured interviews; want to accrue assessment hours and experience quickly; and/or wanting to learn more about a wide range of presentations (you will pretty much see and hear everything in these assessments!).

*A Note on Virtual Treatment/Provision of Telehealth Services:

Our intention is to provide high quality, personalized, and superior training in assessment in an increasingly preferred and common telehealth format. We offer patients clinical assessment using a virtual format. As such, your training experience will also be fully remote. Trainees who do not have access to a private setting with a stable internet connection may request office space in our Cranston location. Please let your supervisors know your needs and we will accommodate to the best of our ability.

Consistent with our commitment to integrative research and clinical care, our group was one of the first researchers to publish data comparing in person and virtual care, and our findings suggest that remote treatment: increases access to people who may not otherwise have presented to treatment; increases patient attendance and retention in treatment; and results in comparable outcomes to in-person treatment (Zimmerman et al., 2021). However, we have been unable to find comparable studies on the experience of supervision and training in a virtual format, and recognize this may present challenges to trainees seeking a different experience.

To Apply:

Please direct any questions to our Director of Extern Training at drmeth@scp-ri.com

If interested, please email the following materials to Dr. Meth at the email address above. Put “Assessment Practicum Application” in the subject line, and ensure all files are clearly labeled with your name in the file name. For example, “CV_JSmith”

• Curriculum Vita
• Letter of interest
• Letters of recommendation (2)
• Transcripts (unofficial)

Deadline: Applications will be accepted until 1 January, and reviewed on a rolling basis as long as the position is available.

Interviews will be conducted annually in January.

Clinical Psychology - Adult Treatment Practicum Training South County Psychiatry
Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP)
2024-2025
Practicum Point of Contact: drmeth@scp-ri.com

Introduction

Thank you for your interest in a practicum placement with South County Psychiatry! Our site offers advanced practicum training at the pre-internship level for psychology doctoral students. This placement is designed to provide advanced doctoral students (3rd year or later) with an enriching training experience and a variety of learning opportunities.

Start Date and Duration: July 1, 2024 - June 30, 2025*
*flexible start/end times available, please contact us with questions/concerns

Required Days: 3 days per week, during the hours of 8:30AM - 1:30PM; additional hours outside of program hours are flexible. 16-20 hours per week total.

Compensation: None currently, though please check back with us soon.

Practicum Supervisors:

Molly Meth, PhD
Theresa Morgan, PhD
Kristin Davidoff, PhD
Douglas Long, PhD
Olga Obraztsova, PhD

The Intensive Outpatient Program at South County Psychiatry

The Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) was founded in May 2023 by a group of values-driven psychologists (and one values-driven psychiatrist) with extensive experience treating patients at higher levels of care. We are excited to say we are currently the only generalist IOP in the state of Rhode Island. The program has also already doubled in size since its inception, due in large part to community demand and word of mouth. Our IOP is housed within South County Psychiatry (SCP), a leading private practice serving Rhode Island and surrounding communities. The program provides intensive, short-term, acute care for people with a wide variety of mental health concerns.

Our training team is comprised exclusively of psychologists at the doctoral level, all of whom come directly from positions at the psychology training consortium at Brown University Medical School. We have extensive training experience with psychology and psychiatry fellows, interns, and externs through these settings. Perhaps most importantly, training has been an integral part of our professional identities since graduate school. We share a commitment to providing a values-based and individualized training experience to trainees rotating through our program.

The IOP was designed exclusively following evidence-based care, and nested within third-wave behavior therapies. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is the foundational approach to treatment in the program, with other modalities (e.g., Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Exposure and Response Prevention, Prolonged Exposure) utilized as appropriate based on individual patients’ needs. Externs applying for this position should have a solid grounding in cognitive behavioral treatment and behavior therapy generally. It is not necessary nor exclusionary to have prior experience with ACT or ACT principles.

We aim to provide client-focused care that supports patients in reconnecting with valued living while coping with mental health needs. To that end, care is delivered via a virtual platform with minimal disruption to the patient’s life. Patients attend a combination of individual sessions and group therapy sessions, which includes two 60-minute groups, individual therapy 2-3 times per week, and medication management as needed. The program runs daily from 9:00AM until 12:30PM, with an average length of stay around 4-6 weeks. With training and supervision, externs will be part of a small team that provides care for approximately 18 patients total. The extern will have an individual smaller caseload of patients (2-3), but will treat other patients in the IOP via group therapy. The program is designed so that providers have the opportunity to get to know a reasonable number of patients and the team has high communication which improves the overall milieu.

Population Served

Our program serves a diverse, adult (18+) patient population of all gender identities, with the goal of providing culturally sensitive and inclusive care to all patients. Demographics are generally reflective of the broader Rhode Island community. Common presenting concerns include mood disorders, anxiety disorders, suicidality, personality pathology (e.g., BPD), post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, among others. Exclusion criteria include individuals who are unable to participate meaningfully in an active treatment setting, and individuals with primary substance use disorders whose concerns are more competently addressed by a dual diagnosis program.

Responsibilities:

1. Review intake assessments, create treatment plans, and function as the individual therapist for a caseload of 2-3 patients, each seen 2-3 times per week
   
2. Observe, plan, and independently conduct ACT skills and process groups 2-3 times per week 3. Function as an integral member of our multidisciplinary treatment team, including:
   • Participating in daily team consultations
   • Communicating with and providing consultation to colleagues
   • Maintaining consistency in adherence to an ACT-based treatment model
   • Supporting the development of an effective treatment milieu for all patients.
3. Attend 2-4 hours of combined group and individual supervision weekly

Please note that the training process is highly individualized based on trainee needs. It is our intention that you develop knowledge and confidence at the rate which works best for you! Externs come to us from a variety of backgrounds, and therefore vary in the speed and process by which they develop independence in the above responsibilities. To this end, we would almost certainly be providing trainees some combination of: observing clinical care, planning and structuring groups and individual sessions with support, being observed in vivo in their own clinical care, recording clinical care for later review when appropriate, leading/co-leading groups, and other supervision experiences as appropriate and needed. You will be assigned a primary individual supervisor who you meet with regularly, and whose job it is to work collaboratively to effectively meet your training needs.

Additional Opportunities Available:

South County Psychiatry is a rapidly growing psychiatric practice serving the larger east coast community. We currently have active programs in Intensive Outpatient Treatment (IOP), Family and Couples Therapy, Outpatient Treatment, Neuropsychological Assessment, and Weight Management. SCP is active in developing additional programs as provider interest and community needs change.

As supervisors at SCP, we are motivated to provide a positive and comprehensive training experience introducing externs to opportunities in private practice settings, particularly given the paucity of such sites in doctoral training. We also expect that your interests will grow and expand over the process of your time with us. In fact, we support and anticipate this! Therefore, externs who are performing well and who express interests outside of the IOP experience may request to learn more about research or treatment in any of these areas (or others) outside of their regular practicum hours. In these cases, we will do our best to facilitate opportunities in the larger SCP practice in whatever capacity is appropriate and aligns with training needs.

This training experience will be a good fit for you if you are... interested in learning more about ACT; you love nerding out about behaviorism; you have (or are willing to develop!) a high tolerance for interesting presentations, comorbidity, and people generally; you have an interest in learning about how we translate the evidence-base to real-world clinical work; private practice intrigues you; you like the idea of working with a team in clinical work; and/or you are alternately intimidated, nervous, and excited by learning group treatment models.

At our IOP you will learn how to initiate clinical progress with patients quickly, and flexibly meet their treatment needs in a higher level of care – which can be very different from traditional weekly 50 minute sessions. Hopefully this sounds exciting and interesting to you!

Values Statement

We are ACT providers, and as such we would be remiss if we did not include a clear statement of values. (If you aren’t sure why that makes sense yet, please apply for our externship position!). So, without further ado...

We pledge to make values a consistent touchstone of our clinical practice, training experiences, and professional identities. We aim to hold these values both lightly and seriously, and to not lose our sense of humor in the process.

We care deeply about providing evidence-based, compassionate care of the highest quality to people in our community who need support when they are hurting the most.

We aim to normalize and reduce stigma in seeking mental health treatment, and to provide recovery-based care to people in need.

We believe this care should be widely available and provided with sensitivity to issues of diversity, discrimination, and individual experience. To this end we are committed to providing care to individuals from all gender, race, ethnic, and other identities that is integrative, inclusive, pro-social and anti-discriminative in its provision.

As noted above, we believe these values also apply to the training experience. We share a dedication to providing a superb, comprehensive, compassionate, and thorough training experience to externs and other trainees operating within our team. We value supporting trainees’ developing independence, and actively valuing their contributions to our programs as developing providers.

We take care of the team. We look out for each other. We celebrate our individual and collective successes and examine our failures, both as professionals and as people. We provide a safe place to ask for help and support, and offer it freely, genuinely, and wholly.

We actively look out for those who are at risk by dint of their role or designation within an organization or society. We believe the latter often applies to trainees and patients in our care. Therefore, it is our responsibility to advocate for those in training or treatment, knowing they often cannot speak for themselves within the current system.

We share a commitment to clinical research and evidence-based practice in both training and provision of clinical care. It is our belief that as providers, we should strive to consistently deliver treatment that is clearly linked to evidence-based processes of change, in service of patient benefit and values, and consistent with our values as an organization.

Because the evidence-base is constantly growing and changing, we therefore reiterate our commitment to learning and growth, and to holding ourselves accountable to these values as an IOP community.

*A Note on Virtual Treatment/Provision of Telehealth Services:

Our intention is to provide high quality, personalized, and superior training in ACT and IOP level care in an increasingly preferred and common telehealth format. We offer patients clinical assessment using a virtual format. As such, your training experience will also be fully remote. Trainees who do not have access to a private setting with a stable internet connection may request office space in our Cranston location. Please let your supervisors know your needs and we will accommodate to the best of our ability.

Consistent with our commitment to integrative research and clinical care, our group was one of the first research programs to publish data comparing in person and virtual care. Our findings suggest that remote treatment: increases access to people who may not otherwise have presented to treatment; increases patient attendance and retention in treatment; and results in comparable outcomes to in-person treatment (Zimmerman et al., 2021). However, we have been unable to find similar studies on the experience of supervision and training in a virtual format, and recognize this may present challenges to trainees seeking a different experience.

To Apply:

Please direct any questions to our Director of Extern Training at drmeth@scp-ri.com

If interested, please email the following materials to Dr. Meth at the email address above. Put “IOP Practicum Application” in the subject line, and ensure all files are clearly labeled with your name in the file name. For example, “CV_JSmith”

• Curriculum Vita
• Letter of interest
• Letters of recommendation (2)
• Transcripts (unofficial)

Deadline: Applications will be accepted until 1 January, and reviewed on a rolling basis as long as the position is available.

Interviews will be conducted annually in January.