CMHC internship program exposes undergraduates to careers in community mental health

An innovative internship program at the Connecticut Mental Health Center is exposing undergraduate college students to careers in community mental health, according to a paper published in the journal Academic Psychiatry and written by Yale researchers.

The goal of the summer job training is to encourage more college students to seek careers in public sector mental health, and the paper tracks the learning opportunities provided by the nine-week program.

Interns are supervised by licensed professionals, and attend twice-weekly seminars with topics like working in community mental health, citizenship, recovery-oriented care, diagnosis-specific seminars, stigma and discrimination, cultural considerations, and career paths.

“We wrote the paper to help promote the idea of opportunities for undergraduates to have chances in public mental health settings early in their career – there is such a need to prime the pipeline with bright talented young people with a commitment to working with underserved populations,” said Rebecca Miller, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and director of Peer Support and Family Initiatives at CMHC. She wrote the paper with Erika Carr, Lauren Utter, Thomas Styron, and Jeanne Steiner.

“I’m hoping that publishing this will inspire others to potentially create similar opportunities as I hear from many that they struggle to find experiences related to direct care in mental health,” Miller said. “We have had enormous interest and fantastic applicants, and could use even more sites, but it is always a balance between providing a rich opportunity for the intern and the extra time and effort required by staff, especially during these tight economic times.”

The internship mirrors a program at Bellevue Hospital in New York, but the authors say there are few other programs that offer similar experiences.

The 18- to 20-hour-per-week internship has three components: placement within a clinical service, weekly group supervision with a psychologist and psychology trainee, and twice-weekly seminars.

Interns work on outpatient services, including CMHC’s specialized young adult services team, clinical outpatient team, and with a research-oriented inpatient unit that specializes in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Activities range from co-leading psychiatric rehabilitation groups such as exercise or writing, shadowing psychiatrists and clinical providers, attending team meetings and rounds, sitting in on individual therapy sessions, assisting with research and manuscript preparation, attending center committee meetings, engaging in individual meetings with agency leaders, and assisting with clerical tasks, as needed.

According to the paper, the internship has received high ratings from participants, and the program “achieved its stated aims of providing a rich experience to college students in order to facilitate advanced career exploration in the behavioral health professions.”