Internship Admissions, Support, and Initial Placement Data

This description must be consistent with the program’s policies on intern selection and practicum and academic preparation requirements:

The Loma Linda University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology Internship Program is a full-time, APA-accredited, predoctoral generalist health service psychology program for applicants seeking intensive, experiential training across psychiatric, medical, and integrated-care settings. The program aims to prepare entry-level generalist psychologists who have been exposed to the varied clinical contexts in which professional psychologists work and who can enter a range of professional roles and settings with confidence. Consistent with its integrated, experiential, developmental Local Clinical Scientist training model, the program prepares interns to use scientific knowledge, clinical observation, patient response, local outcome information, and reflective supervision to guide real-world practice.

The program is a good fit for applicants who are interested in developing broad competence in psychological assessment and diagnosis, individual and group intervention, consultation, interdisciplinary collaboration, supervision, and program development/evaluation. Interns develop these core competencies while gaining concentrated experience in particular clinical areas through their assigned rotations. The program is designed to prepare psychologists not only for direct clinical service, but also for the changing professional environment in which psychologists are increasingly expected to serve as consultants, supervisors, educators, collaborators, and contributors to clinical program and systems improvement. Training therefore includes opportunities to participate in interdisciplinary teams, provide consultation, supervise junior trainees under supervision, deliver case presentations, and develop or evaluate a clinical program or service. The program-development/evaluation component helps interns apply research principles and local clinical data to identify needs, evaluate services, communicate findings, and contribute to meaningful organizational improvement.

Interns complete concurrent, year-long behavioral health/psychiatric and medical/health psychology experiences. This structure provides direct clinical experience with patients across developmental stages—including children, adolescents, adults, and older adults—with diverse presenting concerns, demographic characteristics, cultural backgrounds, and medical and psychiatric needs. Training occurs across varied service-delivery contexts, including outpatient mental health, psychiatric inpatient, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, medical outpatient, and integrated-care settings. Interns receive experience with multiple clinical modalities, including individual psychotherapy, group psychotherapy, psychological assessment, consultation, interdisciplinary treatment-team participation, and provision of supervision under supervision.

The specialty mental health rotation occurs in psychiatric inpatient, partial hospitalization, or intensive outpatient settings and may include work with adult, adolescent, child, geriatric, eating-disorder, personality-disorder, co-occurring-disorder, or other specialty populations. Examples of experiences include adult psychiatric partial hospitalization/intensive outpatient programming; geriatric intensive intervention services with neuropsychological assessment components; child and adolescent partial hospitalization or intensive outpatient services; eating-disorder treatment; and other specialized psychological services. The health psychology rotation occurs in medical outpatient, hospital, integrated-care, and consultation settings and includes work with patients managing chronic or complex health conditions, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, chronic pain, obesity/bariatric concerns, endocrine conditions, infectious disease, rheumatologic conditions, women’s health concerns, high risk pregnancies, oncology, palliative care, and psychiatric consultation-liaison needs. Together, these rotations give interns substantial exposure to patients with co-occurring medical and psychiatric concerns and to the role of psychologists within multidisciplinary health-care systems.

The program is also a strong fit for applicants who value whole-person, culturally responsive care and recognize that religion, spirituality, existential meaning, and faith-community involvement can be important dimensions of many individuals’ psychological functioning, coping, identity, relationships, health behavior, treatment engagement, and recovery. In keeping with LLU’s mission to “Make Man [Humanity] Whole,” the program emphasizes a bio-psycho-social-spiritual approach to clinical care. Interns receive training in religiously and spiritually integrated psychotherapies and in the ethical assessment and integration of religious and spiritual factors into case formulation, intervention, consultation, and professional decision-making when clinically relevant and desired by the patient. This training emphasizes cultural humility, respect for all religious, spiritual, and secular worldviews, awareness of the clinician’s own assumptions and biases, and an absolute commitment not to impose the beliefs or values of the intern, supervisor, or institution on patients. Applicants with a genuine interest in developing competence in this area are strongly encouraged to apply; however, neither applicants nor interns are required to hold any particular religious belief or affiliation.

Applicants should be enrolled in an APA-accredited doctoral program in clinical psychology or an eligible counseling psychology doctoral program, have completed at least three years of doctoral training, and be certified as ready for internship by their doctoral program. Strong applicants typically have completed foundational coursework in intellectual/cognitive assessment, personality and projective assessment, abnormal psychology, personality theory, and psychotherapy theory, as well as supervised practicum experience in psychological assessment, including administration, scoring, interpretation, and integrated report writing. The program particularly values applicants with demonstrated clinical maturity, ethical judgment, interpersonal effectiveness, openness to feedback, and prior practicum experiences that support readiness for varied psychiatric, medical, and interdisciplinary training experiences.

Applicants should be prepared for a demanding, full-time training year that includes direct clinical service, psychological assessment, scheduled individual and group supervision, didactics, case presentations, supervision of junior trainees, interdisciplinary consultation, and a program-development or evaluation project. The best fit is an applicant who wants to develop a strong professional identity as a versatile, ethical, evidence-informed health service psychologist—prepared to provide high-quality psychotherapy while also assuming the broader consultation, supervision, leadership, and systems-development roles increasingly expected in contemporary health service psychology.

Applicants must submit a cover letter describing how the LLU School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry Clinical Psychology Internship would support their professional training goals, along with a psychological assessment sample (an integrated assessment battery is preferred). Within the cover letter, applicants should also provide a substantive reflection on the program’s whole-person, bio-psycho-social-spiritual approach to health care: 

• Consistent with LLU’s mission to “Make Man [Humanity] Whole,” the program provides training in cultural diversity and opportunities for focused theoretical, scientific, and clinical exploration of religion and spirituality as dimensions of emotional health. This approach is patient-centered: neither the religious affiliation of the institution nor the personal beliefs of the intern are privileged; instead, assessment and intervention are guided by the patient’s worldview, values, religious or spiritual beliefs, and clinical needs. 

Applicants should describe how they understand religion and spirituality as potential sources of resilience, meaning, coping, community support, distress, conflict, or other clinically relevant influences on psychological functioning, and how they would approach these issues ethically, respectfully, and in accordance with available scientific evidence.

Rather than simply indicating agreement with this mission, applicants should provide a thoughtful and specific response that addresses at least one of the following: a prior clinical, practicum, research, personal, or professional experience that shaped their understanding of whole-person or spiritually integrated care; a clinical question, challenge, or ethical tension they have encountered or anticipate encountering when religion or spirituality is relevant to treatment; or a specific learning goal related to culturally responsive and patient-centered integration of religion and spirituality in psychological practice. Applicants are not expected to hold any particular religious or spiritual beliefs; the purpose of this portion of the cover letter is to understand applicant’s capacity for reflection, cultural humility, scientific curiosity, and ethical engagement with patients for whom religion, spirituality, or a religious worldview is an important aspect of identity, meaning-making, coping, relationships, distress, or treatment. 

(Provide an Aggregated Tally for the Preceding 3 Cohorts)

Note: “PD” = Post-doctoral residency position; “EP” = Employed Position. Each individual represented in this table should be counted only one time. For former trainees working in more than one setting, select the setting that represents their primary position.