PhD Programs That Train For Practice?

[bodmerocity]

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So, unsurprisingly, most of the PhD programs I've looked into explicitly state that the end-state of their training is preparation for research and academia, and that those interested primarily in practice should look elsewhere. I find this disappointing because while my goal is to practice psychotherapy, 1. the scientist-practitioner model for training sounds like a good way to ensure competency, and 2. the prospect of adding meaningful and original research to a scientific discipline is very appealing to me. Are there any PhD programs that accept practice as a viable goal for students?

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Are there any PhD programs that accept practice as a viable goal for students?

Probably 85% of them has this as their goal. If you look at University of Minnesota or U of Wisconsin...expect hardcore researchers there, but most programs WANT their students to be scientifically-grounded clinicians.

 

[Pragma]

Probably 85% of them has this as their goal. If you look at University of Minnesota or U of Wisconsin...expect hardcore researchers there, but most programs WANT their students to be scientifically-grounded clinicians.

Not so sure about that. Lots of PhD programs will push people towards academics. Mine was that way...there was a subtle bias against people who wanted to be clinicians it seemed. Of course, that didn't stop anyone from doing it. I took a clinical postdoc and got some crap for it.

I guess it goes to show that you can say you want to do research and then take that degree straight towards becoming a clinician

That's fine with me because academia is crowded enough...I plan to go back and the less competition the better!

 

[cara susanna]

I think someone interested primarily in clinical practice would be miserable at a place like Madison or Minnesota.

 

[Tesseract18]

UT Southwestern Medical Center's (Dallas) Clinical PhD program is very well suited for those interested in more practice-oriented careers.

 

[Ya Ya]

Though we are said to have a Boulder model, the majority of people within my program are practice oriented. Course offerings and colloquiums have been tailored to fit that overwhelming preference. I can provide more info if you'd like to PM me.

I'm more of a research person so I've had to actively seek out prof who were like minded.

 

[erg923]

Dont let the program website boss you around. Its your career and your life. You can do what you what you want with it. Nobody is gonna make you take any jobs you dont want. And many times, even research heavy programs will provide very good quaility clinical training (although maybe lesser in quantity in comparsion to some others).

 

[CatsFan]

While you may not find many practice oriented Ph.D. programs, you will find many balanced programs. The Insider's Guide to Graduate Programs in Clinical and Counseling Psychology rates each program on a 1-7 scale, 1 being completely practice focused and 7 being completely research focused. Many programs are in the 4-5 range. I'm also interested in a combination of research and practice, and the program that I'll be starting next year was listed as a 4 🙂.

 

[Doctor Eliza]

If you are really considering practice, you might seriously think about PsyD programs. I did my PhD at an R1 research university that was rumored to have a balanced approach. When I entered the program I seriously thought I wanted to be a professor. Through the program i became disolutioned about academia and decided to pursue a practice focused career. My clinical training was okay, but it really paled in comparison to my PsyD colleagues on internship. I was so jealous that they had whole courses in things like DBT and group therapy. We had nothing other than the basic into to CBT and intro to psychodynamic.

Best,
Dr. E

 

[Doctor Eliza]

P.S. Also consider the very real difference among the following:
1. What programs say they produce.
2. What programs want to produce.
3. What programs actually produce.

In my case, the program claimed to produce academics, actually produced clinicians, and was sorta pissed off about this situation. Being pissed led to aspiring clinicians being treated like 2nd class citizens.

Dr. E

 

[GoPokes]

Surprised no one has said this yet (or maybe I missed it) but why not try Counseling Ph.D.'s?

 

[Psychadelic2012]

Surprised no one has said this yet (or maybe I missed it) but why not try Counseling Ph.D.'s?

👍 +1. I think you mean counseling psychology Ph.D., right? 😉 At interviews for counseling psych PhD programs, the students were all very open when they were intending to go into practice, in my experience. At least they were honest?!

 

[PsychBrownBag]

It all depends upon the school. I went to an R1 for my PhD and there was fantastic training in house (the clinical placements were, at times, underwhelming). Although many of us, myself included, end up going the academic route, there are also plenty of folks who go on to become accomplished clinicians.

A strong background in research will never hurt a clinician.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

It all depends upon the school. I went to an R1 for my PhD and there was fantastic training in house (the clinical placements were, at times, underwhelming). Although many of us, myself included, end up going the academic route, there are also plenty of folks who go on to become accomplished clinicians.

A strong background in research will never hurt a clinician.

Same here re: in-house training, although our externships were actually excellent as well. I'd imagine it's really going to vary by program, but keep in mind that the majority of Ph.D. holders become clinicians (i.e., focus the majority of their time on clinical work). For my program, probably somewhere between 50-75% (complete estimates) end up going predominantly-clinical, depending on the year.

My take on things is that while many Ph.D.-awarding programs won't come out and say they primarily train clinicians, the numbers don't lie. Your best bet is probably going to be asking current students the amounts and variety of clinical experiences they're able to secure. You can also, as other posters have mentioned, look into outcome placement data.

 

[bodmerocity]

Thanks for the insight and advice, everyone!

 

[wigflip]

👍 +1. I think you mean counseling psychology Ph.D., right? 😉 At interviews for counseling psych PhD programs, the students were all very open when they were intending to go into practice, in my experience. At least they were honest?!

Hi Psychadelic,

Not trying to challenge you, but curious: re above statement, were the students who were open and honest about wanting to become clinicians the same ones who got accepted?

 

[wigflip]

If you are really considering practice, you might seriously think about PsyD programs. I did my PhD at an R1 research university that was rumored to have a balanced approach. When I entered the program I seriously thought I wanted to be a professor. Through the program i became disolutioned about academia and decided to pursue a practice focused career. My clinical training was okay, but it really paled in comparison to my PsyD colleagues on internship. I was so jealous that they had whole courses in things like DBT and group therapy. We had nothing other than the basic into to CBT and intro to psychodynamic.

Best,
Dr. E

This is really valuable to hear, Dr. E., and one of the many reasons why I have my sites set on a PsyD. The research I've done into even the mid-level uni-based PhD programs in my area suggests that they are all on board with actively stigmatizing clinicians. It's why I didn't apply to a clinical PhD out of undergrad. As you suggest, you can drag your carcass through a research-focused program and use your degree for your own purposes, but it's a climate (and training) issue as well.*

*Just based on what I have been told by enrolled PhD students and profs at local unis about their own experiences with and impressions of their own programs. Not trying to make a broad, generalizable statement or spark some kind of PsyD vs. PhD conflagration. 😉

 

[cara susanna]

See, the funny thing is I've had the opposite experience of Dr. E. I thought I wanted to be middle of the road (primarily clinical work + some research), went to a balanced, more clinically-oriented PhD program that primarily trains clinicians, ended up disliking clinical work and wanting to pursue research. And now I wish I had chosen a more research-oriented place, haha.

My program doesn't have a strict mentorship model, many people at my program only do their thesis and dissertation in terms of research, and the faculty is just fine with that. Of course, you can do more if you want, you just have to seek out opportunities and make time for said research on top of a crazy busy clinical training schedule. Which I'm doing, but it's not as easy and productive as working under a mentorship model with a bunch of labmates who can help you out.

I do like to use my own experience to warn people: you may think that you know what you want now, but it can easily change. Make sure that you think of that possibility when picking programs to apply to.

 

[Psychadelic2012]

Hi Psychadelic,

Not trying to challenge you, but curious: re above statement, were the students who were open and honest about wanting to become clinicians the same ones who got accepted?

They were current students in the program(s). Otherwise, I'm not sure yet 😉.

 

[Doctor Eliza]

Cara Susanna,

I absolutely agree with you that what you think you want to do when you apply may change dramatically through the course of the program. My overall impression is that a more typical shift is researcher to clinician, not the other way around. What is your impression of this? (A true question, not meant to be said in an aggressive tone. 🙂)

In my program, I do think at least part of the reason for the shift was there fairly extreme unhappiness and personal psychopathology of our research mentors. We didn't want to end up like them! On the other hand, our clinical supervisors were full-time clinicians in the community who volunteered to supervise us for no compensation. For the most part, they were lovely and happy people. We would much rather end up like the supervisors than the faculty!

Dr. E

 

[cara susanna]

Researcher to clinician probably is the more common case, I would guess 🙂

 

[GoPokes]

Hi Psychadelic,

Not trying to challenge you, but curious: re above statement, were the students who were open and honest about wanting to become clinicians the same ones who got accepted?

I was accepted to a fully-funded Counseling psych Ph.D. program this year and made it fully clear my intentions were to be a clinician.

👍 +1. I think you mean counseling psychology Ph.D., right? 😉 At interviews for counseling psych PhD programs, the students were all very open when they were intending to go into practice, in my experience. At least they were honest?!

Yes, didn't think I had to mention "psych" considering what this forum is... 🙂


I've never really understood why some are so quick to make the assumption that if they want to be clinically oriented they should only go the Psy.D. route. Counseling Ph.D.'s can provide quite a bit of clinical training with less of the stigma Psy.D's receive and much less debt.

 

[snowcherries]

Part of the reason I fell in love with school psychology is that many of the top-tier programs are perfectly happy to train students who aren't entirely committed to research careers, although a student with no interest in research wouldn't be a good fit. When I applied to clinical and school programs this cycle, I made it very clear that I was dually committed to training in research and practice, and some programs thought that was an excellent approach whereas some made it clear that they were exclusively interested in training researchers.

Ultimately, I was admitted to two well-respected scientist-practitioner programs that were totally down with the fact that my goals are balanced. The moral of the story is that programs and mentors vary a lot in their training goals, and asking questions and doing your research is the best way to find a program that meets your needs.

 

[Psychadelic2012]

Yeah, I almost felt strange emphasizing my heavy interest in research during interviews (at counseling psych programs), as it seemed that the faculty, current students, and prospective students all leaned towards practice. And then there was the experimental PhD program I applied to who said my interests seemed too clinical...go figure!

I have seen students in more practice-oriented programs grow to emphasize research. I think it can go either way. I think going practice to research is better supported in many ways, because what school wouldn't want more research and pubs?! Although, I have run into my share of clinicians who turn their nose up at research, but they're mostly masters-level and expressing their own cognitive dissonance based on their poor statistical training.

 

[ClinPsychEnthus]

I personally went from being primarily clinically focused to having an increased interest in a career in research (at least some of my time). It helps that I'm immersed in conducting research I love, and I'm finding that much of the research questions I am interested in tend to be related to identifying needs for interventions, outcomes studies, efficacy of various treatments with various symptoms or populations...

 

[psychgeek]

Dont let the program website boss you around. Its your career and your life. You can do what you what you want with it. Nobody is gonna make you take any jobs you dont want. And many times, even research heavy programs will provide very good quaility clinical training (although maybe lesser in quantity in comparsion to some others).

Clinical psych Ph.D. admissions (and internship applications to a lesser extent) involve a kind of ritualized fiction in which all of the students pretend that they are primarily interested in research and all of the professors pretend to believe them. Even the most research heavy schools still have a lot of students end up in clinical work. The ideal graduate student for a clinical psychology professor would be one that becomes a professor in a related branch of psych research after 5-6 years of high value contribution to the professor’s lab. The second most desirable student would be one that becomes a well-respected clinician after 5-6 years of high value research work in the professor’s lab. Undesirable students are those that will not contribute to the professor’s work regardless of their career goals. Most professors I know would like a lab full of ideal students but are perfectly happy with a lab that is a mixture of ideal and desirable students. They pick talented people who can make a reasonable claim to some sort of research interest even though they know that many of them are more interested in funded clinical degree than academics .

This is not to say that all research-focused Ph.D. programs do an equally good job at training clinicians. I think the easiest way to discriminate between schools with good clinical training and poor clinical training is to ask current students about their practicums. Don’t just ask them what they are doing, but make sure you ask detailed questions like, “what did you want to do before you applied for your practicum and how closely does your current placement fit those desires,” “do you have to interview for practicums or are they assigned based upon your interests without an application,” “how many hours of supervision do you get a week?”

I’ve been out for a while (so my impressions might be a little dated), but there were a few Ph.D. programs I knew of that had a reputation for good clinical training. Off the top of my head, they included NU Feinberg, UT, Syracuse, UCLA, University of Washington, Berkeley, UVA, Auburn, Penn, and UNC. I should also mention that I practiced from both a CBT and psychodynamic perspective so these types of programs might be over-represented (I embrace my biases).

 

[cara susanna]

That isn't true of all schools. Every place I interviewed at (all PhD programs) said that they knew some of us wanted to be clinicians and they were fine with it.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

That isn't true of all schools. Every place I interviewed at (all PhD programs) said that they knew some of us wanted to be clinicians and they were fine with it.

This was the case at my program as well, although the sentiment tended to show up after admissions had already been handed out. My guess is that programs/POIs can be wary of individuals who tout clinical interests during interviews as they might suspect these prospective students of ONLY being interested in the clinical aspects of training.