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Doctoral Internship in Professional Health Service Psychology granted full accreditation by APA

The Georgia Southern University Counseling Center’s Doctoral Internship in Professional Health Service Psychology has been granted full accreditation by the American Psychological Association (APA) for the next eight years and is one of only a few Counseling Centers in the Southeast to receive this title.

The national internship program has been in place for seven years and has worked with doctoral interns from a range of universities throughout the country.The program initially submitted its self-study in Spring 2016, and the APA performed a site-visit in March 2017.

“The self-study is a nearly 1,000 page document answering questions on every imaginable detail of our internship experience and how the experience offered meets the training criteria set forth by the American Psychological Association,” said Jodi Caldwell, Ph.D., director of the Counseling Center. “Completing and submitting a self-study is the most work-intensive part of the accreditation process.”

Prior to becoming a psychologist, doctoral students must complete a 2,000-hour internship program at an approved site. As of 2017, every state in the U.S. will require the psychology doctoral internship experience to be APA accredited in order to count toward a psychologist’s professional licensure requirements.

“Doctoral students must apply for an internship through the process of registering with National Matching Services, completing an extensive application, and competing for desired placements at sites across the U.S. and Canada,” said Caldwell. “Accreditation brings international recognition of the quality of the program, it brings a wider range of applicants from around the country to apply for the program, and it provides Georgia Southern with a degree of recognition as one of the few Counseling Center Doctoral Internships in Georgia and the Southeast U.S.”

The internship program at Georgia Southern offers high-quality training in the practice of health service psychology and focuses on application of clinical theory and research. It requires interns to learn and abide by ethical, legal and professional standards of the field.

Upon completion of the program, interns are prepared for generalist entry-level professional practice in college and university counseling centers or similar settings that require skills in individual and group psychotherapy, crisis assessment and intervention, psychoeducational outreach programming, consultation, provision of clinical supervision and administrative functions.

“In addition, woven into the program is the belief that every competent practitioner in the field should be guided by sensitivity to individual differences within a diverse society and should practice openness to lifelong learning,” said Caldwell. “Noted strengths of our program include the provision of supervision, group therapy, crisis counseling and risk assessment, as well as the integration of multicultural training into all components of the program.”

For more information about the program, visit http://students.georgiasouthern.edu/counseling/training/internship/.

Georgia Southern University, a public Carnegie Doctoral/Research University founded in 1906, offers 118 degree programs serving 20,673 students. Through eight colleges, the University offers bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs built on more than a century of academic achievement. Georgia Southern is recognized for its student-centered and hands-on approach to education. Visit GeorgiaSouthern.edu.

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