Adult Track
Adult Track
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2025-26 Health Service Psychology Adult Track Doctoral Interns
We are deeply committed the integration of psychology into the broader health care system and place a high value on interdisciplinary care. Under the mentorship of our accomplished faculty, the internship year offers a unique opportunity to build your confidence, step outside your comfort zone, and start finding your voice. Trainees are essential to our institution, and we rely heavily on their feedback to enhance our program. We look forward to getting to know you!
- Renee Madathil, Ph.D., CBIST Director, Psychology Internship - Adult Track
The Adult Psychology Track provides interns with diverse clinical experiences at various points across the continuum of care, emphasizing the integration of psychology within interdisciplinary teams. This track is designed to help interns develop a strong foundation in intervention, consultation, and team-based care, preparing them for careers in clinical practice, teaching, or research.
Tracks
All adult psychology interns will spend their year in both inpatient and outpatient settings throughout the week. These settings are designed to align with five specific focus areas (all listed on the APPIC Site):
- Serious Mental Illness (SMI): Focuses on working with individuals with serious mental illness across acute and chronic care settings. This emphasis also provides opportunities to collaborate with medical providers and interdisciplinary teams serving these populations, fostering skills in consultation and integrated care.
- Primary clinical training sites: Inpatient Psychiatry, INTERCEPT Program
- Health Psychology: Emphasizes work with medically complex and aging populations, including individuals coping with acute and chronic illness, injury, pain, and disability. This emphasis also provides opportunities to collaborate with medical providers and interdisciplinary teams serving these populations, fostering skills in consultation and integrated care.
- Primary clinical training sites: Inpatient Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Geriatric Telehealth, Behavioral Health Partners
- Deaf Wellness: Major focus on providing psychological services to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing individuals. While training primarily occurs at the Deaf Wellness Center, interns may also engage in short-term or consultative experiences in other settings (e.g., inpatient psychiatry) to broaden exposure to system-level care. Fluency in American Sign Language (ASL) is required.
- Primary clinical training site: Deaf Wellness Center
- Lazos Fuertes: Focuses on providing culturally and linguistically appropriate services to Spanish-speaking populations within our community. Core training occurs within the Lazos Fuertes clinic, with additional experiences (e.g., inpatient psychiatry or consultative roles) designed to enhance exposure to diverse treatment settings and interdisciplinary collaboration. This track offers exposure to the intersection of language, culture, and access to care. Fluency in Spanish is required.
- Primary clinical training site: Lazos Fuertes
- Geropsychology: Focused training in the psychological care of older adults across a variety of settings. Interns will gain experience along the continuum of care, including the inpatient geriatric psychiatry unit and outpatient behavioral health services for older adults and their loved ones. Training emphasizes evidence-based assessment, intervention, and interdisciplinary collaboration. The track also includes a research rotation that provides opportunities to engage in a project related to providing support for care partners.
- Primary Clinical training sites: Inpatient Psychiatry (Geriatric Unit), Older Adult Mental Health Services
Psychology trainees function as full members of a multidisciplinary team across inpatient and outpatient settings and participate in interdisciplinary meetings. Caseloads are tailored to personal learning goals and with an effort to ensure exposure to patients with diverse cultural backgrounds, clinical presentations, and needs.
Research electives may also be integrated as available and relevant to learning goals.
Clinical and Didactic Trainings
Learn more about our rotations and structured training experiences.
Scholarly Activities
Our Trainees present posters of their scholarly activities at the conclusion of the training year.
Clinical Training Sites
Clinical training sites have spanned across the URMC enterprise, from our Strong Memorial Hospital campus to our outpatient clinics in downtown Rochester. Offerings vary year to year - below are examples of current and past training sites.
Inpatient Sites
Inpatient Medicine in Psychiatry (IMIP) is a unique 20-bed unit that offers psychiatric treatment concurrent with treatment for serious medical illnesses. Psychology interns function as full members of a multidisciplinary team and play a key role in staff training and suicide risk assessments and safety planning. Frequently-used treatment modalities include brief motivational interventions to promote healthy behavior for patients with harmful substance use or chronic medical conditions, brief bedside counseling for depression, anxiety, and adjustment problems, and assessment and intervention plans for patients with difficult behaviors.
Interns work with adults and older adults (Geriatric Unit) in an acute psychiatric inpatient setting that spans across multiple units. Patients are admitted for acute psychiatric crises, including but not limited to suicidality and psychosis. Interns conduct psychological testing, provide consultation to multidisciplinary teams, and work with patients by providing individual and group therapy. Interns develop skills working in a fast-paced setting and responding to a variety of patient and staff needs.
A 20 bed unit that offers rehabilitation services to individuals recovering from complex illness and injury. The training provided on this service focuses on the development of skills working as part of an inpatient interdisciplinary team serving individuals recovering from and adapting to a wide range of illnesses, injuries, and disabilities. Exposure and skill development in neuropsychology is also available during this rotation for interested interns.
A 20 bed unit that offers rehabilitation services to individuals recovering from complex illness and injury. The training provided on this service focuses on the development of skills working as part of an inpatient interdisciplinary team serving individuals recovering from and adapting to a wide range of illnesses, injuries, and disabilities. Exposure and skill development in neuropsychology is also available during this rotation for interested interns.
Outpatient Sites
Behavioral Health Partners (BHP) is a mental health resource for the University of Rochester employees and their adult dependents enrolled in the university's healthcare plan. The primary mission is to deliver personalized and accessible mental health care aimed at enhancing the overall well-being of UR employees and their families. BHP offers assessments, individual psychotherapy, and medication management for conditions such as depression, anxiety, stress, and ADHD within a goal-oriented treatment framework.
The BHP Elective rotation will occur onsite at a shared office suite in Pittsford, NY. During this rotation, interns will:
- Attend and actively contribute to interdisciplinary team meetings.
- Provide evidence-based individual psychotherapy under the co-supervision of J. MacLaren Kelly, MAPP, PhD, and Ann Cornell, PsyD, CEAP.
- Collaborate with other healthcare professionals on clients' treatment teams.
The Deaf Wellness Center (DWC) is a program of the University of Rochester Medical Center, based in its Department of Psychiatry. The DWC staff engage in clinical services, teaching, and research activities that pertain to mental health, healthcare, sign language interpreting, and other topics that affect the lives of people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Intern training at this setting focuses on the development of assessment and intervention skills with Deaf individuals. Interns must be proficient in American Sign Language (ASL).
Telehealth/Geriatrics is a unique training opportunity that focuses on the development of clinical intervention skills via a telehealth platform working with an aging population residing in long-term care and skilled nursing facilities in both rural and urban regions of New York state. Interns have the opportunity to provide consultation to multidisciplinary healthcare teams and can focus on development of integrated care skills.
Interventions for Changes in Emotions, Perception, and Thinking Program (INTERCEPT) is an outpatient clinic for people ages 15-28 who are considered to be at clinical high-risk (CHR) for the development of a psychotic disorder in the next 1-2 years. Interns doing a major rotation at the INTERCEPT Program will be part of a multidisciplinary team including psychologists, social workers, nurse practitioners, licensed mental health counselors, researchers, and graduate students. Interns will complete comprehensive intake batteries, see patients for individual treatment sessions, participate in groups, and conduct additional (i.e., non-intake) assessments as needed. INTERCEPT opened in 2022. As with other CHR programs, the goal of treatment is to prevent the onset of a psychotic disorder. Interns completing a rotation at the INTERCEPT Program will obtain an in-depth experience in the field of risk factors for psychosis, and preventive treatment. Assessment measures include the SIPS (Structured Interview for Psychosis-Risk States) and the Positive Symptoms and Diagnostic Criteria for the CAARMS Harmonized with the SIPS (PSYCHS), in addition to other measures related to mood, anxiety, and substance abuse. Individual treatment will include supportive, emotion-focused, cognitive-behavioral, and psychodynamic approaches depending on the needs of the patient. INTERCEPT is a site for multiple research studies, and is participating in the NIMH-funded Accelerating Medicines Partnership ProNET study.
Lazos Fuertes is a URMC Spanish-language outpatient mental health clinic serving Spanish-speaking adults (18+). Lazos offers medication management, as well as individual and group therapy, with care provided by a multidisciplinary bilingual team of psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, therapists, and administrative staff. As one of the only bilingual, bicultural mental health services outside of New York City, Lazos Fuertes is an unmatched resource for the large Spanish-speaking community in Western New York. This elective focuses on the development of assessment and intervention (individual and group) skills with Spanish-speaking adults, as well as skills working with an interdisciplinary team. Opportunities for involvement in research with Spanish-speakers are also available. Interns must be proficient in Spanish to qualify for this training opportunity.
At UR Medicine’s Older Adult Services, we work together with families and individuals to provide specialized mental health care for our community’s aging population, 65 years and older. We also serve caregivers with psychiatric illness or younger individuals with brain disease.
We are a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC)—one of only a handful in the Rochester area—meaning we meet the highest standards of patient care as determined by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Contact Us
If you have further questions, please feel free to contact us for more information:
Email:Linda Brown
Phone: 585-275-3563
Psychology Training Program Administrator
Email: Yasmin Coley
Phone: 585-274-0243
Psychology Training Program Coordinator
Mailing Address:
University of Rochester Medical Center
300 Crittenden Boulevard
Rochester, New York 14642-8409
Psychology Training Director:
Jennifer West, PhD
Associate Training Director:
Kristen Holderle, PhD
Adult Track Internship Director:
Renee Madathil, PhD