Associate Post Master’s Mental Health Fellowship – Fresno

We are committed to nurturing and integrating diversity training into every aspect of our Associate Post Masters Mental Health Fellowship Program by:

• Providing fellows with opportunities to work with patients who represent a wide range of diversity, including ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, socioeconomic status and abilities.
• Placing a high value on encouraging and supporting fellows’ willingness and ability to engage in self-reflection and learning about their assumptions, privileges and habits that could have a negative impact on clinical interactions with patients who are different in significant ways from them.
• Maintaining a consistent focus in clinical supervision on expanding fellows’ multicultural awareness and competence in the provision of psychotherapeutic services and by providing guidance and resources on topics related to diversity.
• Providing formal didactic training on a range of diversity topics (e.g., discovering and mitigating unconscious bias, respecting every voice, and cultivating a sense of inclusion and belonging in the workplace).
• Encouraging fellows to participate in the Regional Mental Health Training Program EID Forums, which provide advanced training on topics related to cultural humility and competence and a safe space in which to reflect upon and discuss their varied experiences.

Regularly scheduled weekly didactic seminars are organized and administered at the regional level for all Kaiser Permanente Northern California mental health trainees. Post Master’s Fellows are required to attend the two-hour weekly seminar, which focuses on aspects of clinical practice that the residents may not regularly encounter. Diversity issues are always integrated into seminar presentations.

Recent seminar topics included:

• Treatment modality training: DBT, CBT, Solution Focused
• Addiction Medicine
• Behavioral Medicine Specialists in the Primary Care setting
• Assessment and Tx planning for Substance abuse
• Dual Diagnosis training
• Post-Partum Depression
• Intimate Partner Violence
• Working with Children and Adolescents
• Parenting skills
• Depression and Anxiety training
• Grief and loss
• Motivational Interviewing
• Brief therapy

Our Regional Mental Health Training Program also sponsors professional training courses for continuing professional development. These courses and presentations are offered at select times during the year for all Kaiser Permanente mental health trainees and staff at Kaiser Permanente Northern California Medical Centers. We bring in national experts and keynote speakers on a variety of cutting-edge topics in mental health treatment and research. Fellows are required to attend these monthly regional trainings in addition to the weekly didactic seminars. Training course dates and a list of speakers and topics can be found on the Regional Mental Health Training Programs website. In addition, many of these lectures are recorded and available under the continuing education lecture library.

Along with the extensive regional and local didactic program and their weekly individual and group supervision, fellows participate in weekly and monthly staff meetings, treatment team meetings, and a case consultation group. Fellows also have the opportunity to participate in weekly Feedback Informed Care (FIC) case consultations.

All fellows are provided with two hours of weekly individual supervision with a primary and secondary supervisor, and two additional hours of weekly group supervision.

The primary and secondary supervisor is responsible for supervising the direct delivery of clinical services. This supervisor takes the lead role in monitoring the fellow’s progress, providing feedback on strengths and areas in need of further development, ensuring effective and safe patient care, adequate documentation, and evaluating training schedules.

Group supervision includes opportunities for fellows to present and discuss cases. Fellows learn how to address treatment through a cultural framework including ethnicity, language, age, gender and sexual identity. Group supervision allows for vicarious learning, practice with professional public clinical presentations, and learning how to give and receive feedback.

Reflecting Kaiser Permanente’s core commitment to mental health and wellness in our communities, each trainee will spend at least 32 hours during their training year on a Community Partnership Project that focuses on improving mental health in the local community beyond our Kaiser Permanente members.

The goal of these projects is to provide outreach to underserved populations in the community to promote healthy behaviors. Training Objectives include developing acquaintance with the tenets of Community Psychology, as well as gaining experience in community outreach, and the development of partnerships within internal and external systems.

Addiction Medicine and Recovery Services (AMRS) provides treatment for patients with Substance Use Disorder (SUD). Greater than 50% of patients with SUDs will present with dual diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and PTSD. There are co-dependency services and family education groups for friends and family members of the patient as well. The program consists of multiple levels of treatment depending on the severity and the needs of the patient. The day treatment program is a combination of integrated and group-based care with a mix of psychoeducation and process-oriented groups. The clinic also offers a harm-reduction program for patients whose goals do not include complete abstinence. The clinic provides outpatient medical detoxification and medication assisted treatment, as well as psychiatric medication management.

The fellow will gain experience in facilitating groups, and providing triage services, intake assessments, case management and individual psychotherapy. Fellows will coordinate care with a multidisciplinary team consisting of MDs, RNs, PhDs and LMFTs within the clinic and other departments.

This track offers fellows the opportunity to work on a multidisciplinary treatment team utilizing evidence-based and multimodal treatment with children, teens, and their families. Fellows are assigned cases from the broad and diverse patient population in the clinic and will address needs related to the treatment of mood disorders, anxiety disorders, autism spectrum disorders, attention and impulse control disorders, trauma, behavioral issues, and more. Fellows will evaluate and diagnose mental health conditions based on DSM-5 and ICD-10 criteria, develop treatment plans and learn how to articulate those plans to their patients.

Fellows will utilize evidence-based interventions within a feedback informed care model including the use of outcomes monitoring at each session. Training in evidence-based individual and family treatment will consist of providing therapy within a focused treatment model. Training in evidence-based group therapy will consist of co-facilitating groups and classes, including family and parenting groups under the supervision of licensed therapists.

• Individual therapy, support groups including post-partum and post covid group.
• Health education classes on depression, anxiety and stress
• Consultations groups