JP204004 - Post Doctoral Fellow, Child/Ad Psych Training

The Gunderson Residence offers an immersive psychology practicum placement.

The Gunderson Residence is an intensive residential treatment program for adult women with borderline and other severe personality disorders. Patients who come to the program are high risk for self-harm and suicidal behaviors and have complex psychiatric and medical challenges.

The program provides extensive education to trainees regarding personality disorders, attachment, development, and numerous empirically validated psychotherapeutic approaches for borderline personality disorder (BPD), including dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), mentalization-based treatment (MBT), general psychiatric management (GPM), and transference focused psychotherapy (TFP).

Given the high frequency of coexisting diagnoses, the program also provides students with an opportunity to explore other evidence-based treatments, such as radically open DBT (RO-DBT) for patients who are over controlled, and DBT for PTSD for patients with a co-occurring diagnosis of PTSD.

Practicum students should have a solid understanding of DBT prior to entering their training year at the Gunderson Residence, and should aim to feel adept at running DBT groups as well as some process groups by the end of their training experience.

Students attend various groups during the first several weeks of their placement as part of orientation to the program. Throughout their training year, trainees observe and participate in rounds and the clinical coordination team meeting each week.

In addition, students are trained to offer skills coaching to patients struggling with high emotionality and high behavioral reactivity. They work closely with the clinical team and carve out behavioral goals for each patient and work weekly with that patient to achieve that behavioral milestone.

Trainees are responsible for a wide range of clinical tasks-including assisting with groups, meeting patients individually to develop behavioral plans for targeted problems, and supporting aspects of patients overall clinical process.

Supervision is a central element of the training experience. All students are supervised by a staff member to support their clinical growth, address ethical, cultural, and professional issues, and to ensure that students uphold the values of McLean and the Gunderson Residence. The clinical team provides both group and individual supervision to support trainees' understanding and implementation of treatment interventions employed within the residential setting.

Students meet weekly with the program director and/or the medical director for supervision. A staff psychologist or psychiatrist works with each trainee to orient them to the program, supervise them throughout their clinical experience, and target specific areas of growth.

Students are encouraged to discuss challenges during group and/or individual supervision. Continued adherence to and support of clinical goals are reinforced during rounds, individual supervision, and group clinical coordination.

Given that the Gunderson Residence offers community-based treatment, all clinical conceptualizations and subsequent interventions are openly discussed with trainees. Therefore, clinician interventions are observable either directly or indirectly by the clinical team and discussed across the various supervision forums.

Trainees are expected to commit to approximately eight hours of individual work with patients, four hours of group work, four hours of clinical coordination with the clinical team, two hours of individual supervision, and two hours of documentation.

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