Associate Post Masters
Mental Health Fellowship

The department of Mental Health and Wellness at Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center is the second largest department in a medical center that serves more than 135,000 members. The Mental Health and Wellness Department at Santa Rosa provides a range of diagnostic and treatment services organized into three basic areas: Adult Services, including an Intensive Outpatient Program, Addiction Medicine and Child and Family Services. The staff consists of clinicians from all disciplines including psychologists, psychiatrists, licensed clinical social workers, nurses, nurse practitioners and marriage and family therapists. More than half of our psychologists and therapists were former postdoctoral residents or fellows. Our staff members practice with a wide range of theoretical orientations.

Depending on placement, opportunities in the department may exist to work with adults, children, or families who present a wide variety of acute and chronic mental illnesses as well as interpersonal and family problems. The clinic emphasizes brief, short term and group treatment approaches.
Fellows are encouraged to keep abreast of current theories and research findings. The hospital’s medical library and computer literature searches are available and attendance at relevant training events within the Kaiser Permanente system is encouraged. Fellows will participate in group treatment based on their interests and clinic needs. Group assignments typically change halfway through the year. Fellows can refer patients to specialty groups; and, whenever appropriate, to treatment-specialty providers (i.e., EMDR treatment for a patient with PTSD).

• Majority of fellows are licensed within 1 year of program completion.
• Tuition reimbursement up $3,000 for continued education.
• More than half of the post masters fellows have been hired over the last three years.

The Adult Mental Health and Wellness Department provides brief individual therapy, long-term individual therapy, family therapy, and extensive specialized therapy programs in a group treatment setting. These programs are based on ongoing and up-to-date research of the best empirically-supported treatments. For example, we offer structured mindfulness and CBT treatment for depression, DBT, cognitive processing therapy for PTSD, and exposure-based CBT for panic/phobia, social anxiety, OCD, GAD, and eating disorders. In addition, we offer group treatment for bipolar disorder, separation/divorce, work wellness, codependency, HIV, hoarding, assertiveness, and women’s issues. The Adult Mental Health and Wellness Department also has an Intensive Outpatient Program.

Kaiser Santa Rosa is proud to offer a year-long Dialectical Behavior Therapy program for our patients. All Santa Rosa postdoctoral residents participate in this program as primary DBT therapists and take part in a weekly consultation group with senior DBT staff. DBT training is ongoing throughout the year.

Fellow participating in the behavioral health post masters fellowship will receive additional supervision and training focusing on implementation of best practices. Fellows will assist in facilitating psychoeducational workshops focusing on behavioral health integration and the Linkage intervention, an evidence-based practice that strengthens the bridge between addiction medicine treatment and overall healthcare. Fellows will also contribute to efforts seeking to implement evidence-based practices across the NCAL region, collaborating with leaders in substance use research at Kaiser Permanente. Fellows will contribute to and work towards leading regional trainings and/or regional implementation calls, connecting with leaders in chemical dependency care across Northern California. Fellows may also seek opportunities to contribute to ongoing research regarding the Linkage intervention.

Our multidisciplinary Child/Family team offers group programs such as teen DBT, teen Intensive Outpatient Program, high school groups, anxiety and depression groups, younger latency age skills group, and a “TOTs” program for 3-5-year-old children and their parents.
The Child/Family Team has an emphasis on providing family therapy to our patients. Fellows working on the Child/Family team can expect to be involved in a year-long family therapy case conference along with senior staff. These Fellows may also provide individual therapy to children, conduct ADHD evaluation, and co-lead therapy groups.

Kaiser Santa Rosa’s Addiction Medicine Recovery Services department offers a full range of multidisciplinary CD and codependency treatments, and in addition has a multi-family program for adolescents. We offer a full Early Recovery abstinence-based program, as well as continuing treatment for patients in longer-term recovery. In addition, we offer treatment for patients in the contemplative/pre-contemplative phase and who are interested in harm reduction.
Clinical opportunities for Fellows may include adult and adolescent group therapy, individual therapy, family therapy, crisis intervention and educational groups.