Category: Newsletter
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General Advice and Experience Creating an External Practicum Site
By Samantha Dashineau, M.S., Purdue University Students in clinical psychology programs may choose to create their own external practicum experiences for a variety of reasons. For me, the internal clinic in my program did not accept clients with eating disorders, which meant I was not able to work with a clinical population of interest during internal…
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Underpaid and Overworked: Lessons Learned from the UC Graduate Student Strike
By Anna Porter, M.A., University of Missouri-Columbia On December 23rd, 2022, the University of California system and 36,000 graduate student workers reached an agreement, effectively ending the largest higher education strike in the U.S. This historic six-week strike resulted in several beneficial changes for graduate workers, including increased pay, childcare reimbursement, expanded paid leave, and campus fee…
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Time to Change: Financial Challenges and Alternatives to the Clinical Internship System
By Matt Matoni, M.A., Temple University The clinical internship has long been fundamental to clinical psychology training programs. It provides a unique opportunity to directly apply what we have learned over the past years and gain new training from clinical experts in a chosen area. Moreover, the supervised training and service provision is critical to accreditation…
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Treatment Considerations for Clinicians Working with Clients During the Transition to Parenthood
By Shannon Savell, M.A., University of Virginia For many, the experience of the transition to parenthood feels starkly different from traditional media portrayal or colloquially how it is described as a time of immense joy and purpose and deepened love between partners. This is why it may be shocking to some that despite being a highly…
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Evidence-Based Interventions for Youth of Color: State of the Current Literature
By Anamiguel Pomales Ramos, M.A., Michigan State University As psychosocial interventions are implemented and disseminated in the community, there have been growing concerns about the perceived fit and generalizability of evidence-based practices to racial-ethnic minoritized groups. Interventions for children and adolescents have been predominantly developed and tested with non-Latine, white samples living in well-resourced communities. The…
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BDSM 101 for Clinical Scientists
by Caroline Boyd-Rogers University of Iowa Bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, sadism/masochism (BDSM) is commonly associated with a sexual preference for consensually giving or taking control during a sexual encounter. Though commonly seen as a “niche” sexual interest, 76% of a large sample of therapists reported working with at least one client with a history of engaging in BDSM. However, only…
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Building R Coding Skills as a Clinical Trainee
by Alexander L. Williams, M.S., Northwestern University Clinical trainees juggle a number of responsibilities. When you are working to keep up with your caseload, stay on top of classes, all the while carving out the time you can for your research, there are compelling reasons to spend as little time as possible on anything else! An…
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Financial Debt and Stress in Clinical Psychology Doctoral Students
by Erica Szkody, Ph.D.* & Steven Hobaica, Ph.D.*** Stony Brook University; ** The Trevor Project Graduate student debt loads are steadily rising, and financial stress remains a significant stressor for many graduate students. In our recent study (Szkody et al., 2022; (N = 912), the average clinical psychology doctoral student loan debt was $76,000 by…
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How Neighborhood Factors Contribute to Well-Being and the Etiology of Psychopathology in Children and Adolescents: A Path Forward
by Estelle Berger, M.S., University of Oregon The places we live and the spaces we inhabit can play a significant role in shaping our mental and general health. This is especially true for children and adolescents as they develop physically, psychologically, and socially. Below, I critically discuss the literature on this topic. Currently, over half of…
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Considerations for Collecting Psychophysiological Data in Early Childhood
by Gabriela Memba, M.A., University at Buffalo Over the past few decades, the field of clinical psychology has incorporated physiology-based theory and methodology into its research (Cacioppo et al., 2007). This growing field of study is known as psychophysiology, which is defined as the scientific study of social, psychological, and behavioral phenomena and their relation…
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Science Communication: 6 Reasons for Increased Public Engagement among Clinical Psychologists
by Matt Mattoni, Temple University No academic field relates to our experience of everyday life as much as psychology: our thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and social life are all wrapped into this one subject. It is unsurprising that psychology has become one of the most popular college majors, and that innumerable books, movies, and shows build…
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Integrating a Developmental Psychopathology Framework into Therapeutic Practice
by Sky Cardwell, M.S., Pennsylvania State University As clinical science training models emphasize the importance of integrated clinical research and practice, I believe developmental psychology frameworks should be incorporated. The field of developmental psychopathology seeks to examine the development and maintenance of psychopathologies and the pathways and mechanisms involved in this development (Hinshaw, 2017). Though developmental…
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Barriers to Entry: Systematic Barriers at the Undergraduate Level to Increasing Diversity Among Professional Psychologists
by Kate Carosella, University of Minnesota There exists a stark mismatch between the diversity of the United States population and that of the psychology workforce (American Psychological Association, 2017; Jones et al., 2021; United States Census Bureau, 2022). This discrepancy has persisted despite repeated, widespread attempts to increase representation (McHolland et al., 1990; Rogers &…
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Surviving and (even) Thriving in Clinical Science Training: A DBT Skills Toolkit for Trainees – Part 1
by Samantha Hellberg, MA*, Jennifer Kirby PhD*, Tiffany Hopkins, PhD***University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill**University of North Carolina, School of Medicine Let’s be real: graduate school can be tough. Students are tasked with juggling countless roles and responsibilities, all while working to develop their professional identity as researchers and clinicians (McElhinney 2008). Many clinical psychology trainees…
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Improving the Computational Reproducibility of Clinical Science: Tools for Open Data and Code
by Jeremy Eberle, MA University of Virginia Open data and analysis code promote computational reproducibility, or reproducing the results of an analysis when applying the same code to the same data (Nosek & Errington, 2020). Yet, in a random sample of articles published in “best practice” clinical psychology journals in 2017, only 2% reported data available…
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Advice for APPIC Virtual Internship Interviews from Someone Who Just Completed the Process
by Lili Gloe, MAMichigan State University Virtual psychology internship interviews have become the norm during COVID-19. In 2021, 98% of internship programs conducted their interviews exclusively virtually and many continued to do so in 2022. And it seems likely that, in some capacity, virtual internship interviews are here to stay (see APPIC 2021 Survey results).…
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Models of Personality-Psychopathology Relations
by Alexander Williams, MSNorthwestern University Cross-sectional inquiries make clear that personality and psychopathology are reliably linked (Kotov et al., 2010). For decades, theorists have proposed and studied a set of models that purport to account for the overlap between personality and psychopathology. Research in this area has the potential to guide prevention efforts (via targeting…
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HiTOP and Clinical Psychology Training: A Conversation with Dr. Aidan Wright
by Matt MattoniTemple University As clinical psychologists, we rely on normed structures and classifications of psychopathology for research, therapy, and assessment. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has long dominated the field, despite flaws of arbitrary cutoffs and boundaries, within-disorder heterogeneity, and between-disorder comorbidity. To address classification-related issues such as these, numerous…
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Why Clinical Scientists Should Care About Genetics
by Sarah E. Paul, M.A., Washington University in St. Louis Psychopathology is moderately-to-highly heritable, with ~30-80% of the population variance in mental illness attributable to genetic influences (Pettersson et al., 2019; Polderman et al., 2015). The field of psychiatric genetics is making new discoveries at an extraordinarily rapid pace, paralleling the dramatic reduction in cost of…
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A Call for Social Justice Advocacy in Clinical Science Training Program
by Sarah E. Paul, M.A., Washington University in St. Louis It should not be news to anyone that clinical scientists and training programs have a long way to go to achieve Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in clinical training, research, and practice. Nor should it be a surprise that the field of psychology has a reprehensible…
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Alan Kraut Farewell Letter
by Robert W. Levenson, University of California, Berkeley As many of you know, Alan Kraut is stepping down after serving for six years as the Executive Director of PCSAS. This is truly a bittersweet moment for us all. On the one hand, we will greatly miss Alan’s steady hand, tireless energy, sophisticated knowledge, and sense…
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Training the Next Generation of Clinical Psychologists: How Do We Move the Field Forward?
by David A. Sbarra, Ph.D., University of Arizona & Howard Berenbaum, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Let’s begin with a thought experiment. Close your eyes and try to forget everything you know about what clinical psychologists do and how they are trained. Forget clinical hours. Forget internship. Forget classes, requirements, advisors, and advisees. Just let…
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Chatbots: The Future of Psychotherapy?
by Linnea Sepe-Forrest, Indiana University Bloomington In an ideal world, there would be enough therapists to serve everyone’s needs across the world. Therapists would not experience any burnout or require high compensation for their services. While this sounds like an impossible feat, many companies are attempting to address unmet therapeutic needs by providing psychotherapy through artificial intelligence…
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The Conflation of Race and Ethnicity: A Psychological Misconception
by Katrina Rbeiz, Vanderbilt University After conducting multiple clinical assessments and taking psychological surveys online, I kept coming across the same issue of ethnicity and race being treated as the same measure of identity. ‘Ethnicity’ boxes would sometimes only include racial categories, and ‘race’ boxes would dismiss a few identities altogether, relegating any missed categories as…