Consortium Internship Program
The Stony Brook University Consortium Internship Program (SBU-CIP) offers a full-time, 12-month, doctoral internship in clinical psychology to qualified students in doctoral psychology programs. The SBU-CIP includes three-member agencies: the Leonard Krasner Psychological Center (KPC), a psychology training clinic associated with the doctoral program in clinical psychology, Department of Psychology (College of Arts and Sciences), the Mind Body Clinical Research Center (MBCRC), an outpatient facility associated with the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Health (Stony Brook Medicine), and the Stony Brook University Hospital (SBUH; Stony Brook Medicine), Long Island's premier academic medical center and an academic hospital that provides general health services to the community, and which serves as the region's only tertiary care center and Regional Trauma Center, among other medical specialties. Although completely distinct in administration and location, member agencies are part of the Stony Brook University (SBU). The SBU-CIP is partially affiliated with the SBU doctoral program in clinical psychology.
The overall aim of the SBU-CIP is to train and educate psychology interns to practice professional psychology competently based on a clinical scientist model. The training philosophy is informed by the Evidence Based Practice in Psychology (EBPP) approach, which encompasses the notion that best practice is grounded in the integration of the best available research with clinical expertise in the context of key patient characteristics (including culture, diversity, and preferences). A scientifically-minded approach informs every aspect of the SBU-CIP program. The patient population includes children, adolescents, and adults.
The specific goals of the SBU-CIP are three-fold:
- To provide interns with training and experience in delivering services across various therapeutic settings, including outpatient mental health facilities and hospital-based programs. Our trainees rotate through a variety of hospital-based clinical settings (e.g., a psychiatric emergency room, inpatient psychiatry units (adult or child), and the hospital consultation/liaison service). Our primary training orientation is cognitive-behavioral (CBT), including third-wave CBT interventions [e.g., Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and mindfulness-based therapies]. Interns also receive training in behavioral medicine and working in integrated medical settings (e.g., bariatric weight loss center).
- To provide interns with the necessary training that will enable them to develop and/or strengthen "generalist" skills. This is accomplished through instruction, supervision, and direct clinical experience in a wide spectrum of functions engaged in by a professional psychologist, including provision of psychological assessment/evaluation, psychotherapy services to clinical populations, supervision of others, and consultation and liaison services. The SBU-CIP trains interns to discharge their professional responsibilities upholding the highest standards of professional conduct and in ways that are thoughtful, compassionate, skillful, culturally sensitive, and ethical.
- To provide continual professional development by building on the interns' existing skills and competencies via additional training in evidence-based methods. Each main program or rotation is designed to provide interns with training that is sequential, cumulative, and graded in complexity. Upon completion of the internship, SBU-CIP interns will have acquired the knowledge, skills, and professionalism to move to the postdoctoral resident level.
The goals of SBU-CIP are accomplished by capitalizing on the academic training resources and faculty professional expertise of Stony Brook University. The KPC and the MBCRC have pooled resources to provide a training and experiential program that provides interns with wide breadth and strong depth of training.
The training curriculum is designed to promote acquisition of internship goals in a manner that is sequential, cumulative and graded in complexity. Training processes include as follows: (1) Didactics/Instruction –including structured lectures, presentations, and clinical workshops; (2) Supervision, (3) Mentoring in research/readings; and (4) Experiential Activities – including direct service delivery and professional development.
