Amber W. Childs, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, has been appointed Director of the Yale Doctoral Internship Training Program in Clinical and Community Psychology.
Childs assumed her responsibilities as Director on July 1, 2019. She will collaborate closely with Rajita Sinha, PhD, Chief of the Psychology Section in Psychiatry and Co-Director of Clinical Training; Jacob Tebes, PhD, Psychology Site Chief at the Connecticut Mental Health Center; Dwain Fehon, PsyD, Psychology Site Chief at Yale New Haven Hospital, and members of the program’s Executive Training Committee to ensure state-of-the-art training in clinical and community psychology.
“A core facet of my professional identity as a young African American woman psychologist is a special attunement to both the challenges and freedoms associated with change, growth and development," she said. "My affinity toward growth is naturally congruent with the processes of learning, education, and leadership, efforts that are central to my professional work to date. I am humbled by the opportunity to more deeply invest in this work and to join our program’s mission to train the next generation of leaders.”
The Yale Doctoral Internship Training Program is one of the nation’s premier internships in clinical and community psychology, developing the next generation of leaders in this field. Over 15 students are accepted annually to the program, which has been accredited by the American Psychological Association since 1970.
Interns in the program are referred to as "psychology fellows." The internship begins on July 1 and concludes on June 30 of each academic year.
“For me, teaching and training are rewarding in that they allow for a continuous mutual exchange of both knowledge and passion," Childs said. "And in this way, I am always learning. I hope to continue to foster curiosity, shared-learning and openness; values that both characterize our program and guide our path to excellence.”
For me, teaching and training are rewarding in that they allow for a continuous mutual exchange of both knowledge and passion
Amber W. Childs, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Yale Doctoral Internship Training Program in Clinical and Community Psychology
Childs also serves as a program psychologist at Yale Psychiatric Hospital’s adolescent day program. Her work includes implementation and evaluation of evidence-based clinical psychotherapy programming, spearheading the development and execution of comprehensive measurement-based care initiatives across the New Haven and Branford locations, staff education, and providing clinical services. She also serves as the primary advisor for the psychology fellow placed in the Adolescent Services internship placement.
Empirically, she is interested in broader evaluation of, as well as specific psychosocial correlates to (e.g., parent-child relations) treatment outcomes among high-risk youth, especially as they inform opportunities for quality enhancement of care.
She is a member of the Committee for Diversity and Inclusion within the Yale School of Medicine Psychology Section where she works together with faculty and staff to “listen and learn how together, we can acknowledge diversity as central to a strong and unified culture at Yale and how we can fully integrate diversity into all aspects of the core training experiences in our program.”
Childs earned her doctoral degree in clinical psychology from The University of Tennessee in 2014 and was a pre- and post-doctoral fellow at The Institute of Living and Hartford Hospital in Hartford.