Pre-Master’s Mental Health Internship – Richmond
The city of Richmond is a port city located on a peninsula separating the San Francisco and the San Pablo bays. Located 16 miles northeast of San Francisco and on the western shore of Contra Costa County, the city has approximately 116,000 residents. Established in 1905, Richmond has been one of the fastest growing cities in California. In recent years, it has transformed from an industrial city (with the Chevron refinery being a major employer) to becoming a new home for high-tech and biotechnology companies.
The city of Richmond has a rich history. The Kaiser Richmond Shipyards was one of the biggest WWII wartime shipbuilding operations on the West Coast. Rosie the Riveter WWII National Historic Park highlights the city’s role in the home front effort. Richmond has over 32 miles of the Bay Trail, a 500-mile walking and biking route encircling the San Francisco and San Pablo bays. The community is ethnically and culturally diverse. Large percentages of the population are of African American, Latin American, European and Asian descent, with Native American and Pacific Islanders also represented. One third of the community is foreign born, with 45% of residents speaking a language other than English at home.
The Kaiser Permanente Richmond Medical Center – with 41 department and services – opened in 1995 and serves 77,000 health plan members. Our Kaiser Richmond Psychiatry department has supported a mental health training program since the 1990s.
Program Curriculum
Equity, Inclusion & Diversity
We are committed to nurturing and integrating diversity training into all aspects of our training program by:
Providing interns with opportunities to work with patients who represent various aspects of diversity, including age, religion, gender, disability status, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, values, and lifestyle.
Placing a high value on interns’ willingness to engage in self-reflection, and supporting the exploration of attitudes, beliefs and therapeutic postures that could impact clinical interactions.
Maintaining a consistent focus in clinical supervision on expanding interns’ multicultural awareness and competence in the provision of psychotherapeutic services and cultivating a sense of inclusion and belonging in the workplace.
Encouraging interns to participate in the Regional Mental Health Training Program Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Committee’s seminars related to cultural sensitivity and competence as their schedules permits.
Didactic Training
Interns will attend didactic seminars within their clinics and have opportunity to attend regional seminars organized by Mental Health Training Programs as their schedules permit. Didactics will cover a range of clinical and professional development topics as well as explore culturally responsive care. Interns will have access to both live and asynchronous exposure to various speakers and topics which are designed to meet their developmental needs over the course of the training year.
Seminars and Meetings
Interns may attend all-staff department meetings, treatment team meetings, and weekly feedback informed care case consultations.
Supervision
All interns are supervised by licensed mental health professionals who are responsible for overseeing the direct delivery of clinical services. The supervisor takes a role in developing the intern’s learning plan, monitoring their progress, and evaluating their training schedule. The supervisor is also responsible for completing the intern’s evaluation.
Interns will receive a minimum of one hour of individual supervision a week. Two hours of individual supervision will be provided for every 20 hours of service provision at minimum. Interns will also receive at least one hour of group supervision per week which may include case consultation, and topics related to professional development, interdisciplinary communication and systems issues, and multicultural competence and diversity awareness.
Tracks and Rotations
Clinical Case Management
The Clinical Case Management (CCM) program provides intensive treatment to patients struggling with severe mental illness, with a focus on early intervention and evidence-based, culturally responsive practices for Psychotic Spectrum Disorders and other chronic conditions.
This innovative program was the first of its kind at Kaiser Permanente and has been replicated across the region due to its ability to keep patients in the community and out of the hospital. The CCM program utilizes Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Psychosis, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skills, and family therapy interventions to serve people struggling with severe mental illness and their loved ones. The premasters intern will be an integral part of the CCM team, providing individual therapy and case management services in addition to running education and support groups.
Adult Team Generalist
This track offers interns the opportunity to work on a multidisciplinary treatment team utilizing evidence-based and multimodal treatment with adults. Interns are assigned cases from the broad and diverse patient population seeking services in the clinic for mood disorders, anxiety disorders, trauma, aging, adjustment, work or life stress, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, bipolar disorder, eating disorders and other issues. Interns 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. Interns will deliver interventions within a feedback informed care model that includes the use of outcomes monitoring at each session. Training in evidence-based group therapy will consist of shadowing and co-facilitating groups under the supervision of licensed therapists. Interns may have opportunity to join a specialty program such as the Peripartum Wellness Program which addresses the needs of pregnant and postpartum birthing patients and their families.
In addition, interns in the past have been involved in the following innovative programs housed in our department:
· Kaiser Permanente’s first comprehensive Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) Program aimed at reducing high risk behaviors and increasing quality of life for patients with severe emotion regulation problems.
· The La Clínica program is a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians who provide culturally and linguistically client-centered mental health care for Latinx-identified clients, centering culture and the needs of both our clients and providers through advocacy, innovation, and collaboration.
· The first Affirmations For Your Ancestors (AFYA) program creates a safe therapeutic space that honors the unique contributions, wisdom, knowledge and experiences of people in the African Diaspora.
· The Queer and Trans Coalition (QTC) offers a community to LBGTQ+ providers for support, consultation, and connection in order to build culturally-affirming care for patients.
· The Collective Health For Asians (CHA) program exists to develop and provide culturally-responsive care for members of the diverse Asian diaspora through Kaiser and our local communities.
Schedule
Hybrid schedule in which there will be both in person and virtual training
