What should I be doing in grad school based on my goals?

[Intrusive Thots]

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Good afternoon all,

After lurking this forum for many years while completing my undergraduate, I was accepted into a graduate program in clinical psychology, and my first subjectively post-worthy question has arisen.

I am in a Canadian program, where technically I am an MSc student, before being allowed to carry on with my doctorate. I received funding (18,500/year) for my master's research but have to re-apply for federal funding for my Ph.D., which is significantly more lucrative (~30,000 CAD).

Federal funding at the doctoral is primarily based on research output during previous years of study; therefore, I have tried to remain diligent in working on publications in my last year of undergraduate and since my graduate program started. By the end of this calendar year, I will have three publications, all second author, and I was approached and accepted writing a book chapter -- mainly to increase my writing proficiency.

My issue is, I have zero interest in working in academia when/if I graduate. My research is on mental compulsions in OCD. I want to foster clinical experiences, especially an internship in a large American OCD/anxiety-disorder clinic, and eventually, open my clinical practice. I would prefer to do this in America, but there is no guarantee that this will occur.

The confounding issue is that in most (if not all) Canadian provinces, you can't advertise yourself as a specialist when you're a clinical psychologist. Therefore, I question what I should be doing with my time outside of clinical, classes, and research. Considering that my research is narrowly focused on OCD, should my outside reading concentrate on other topics, or should I attempt to learn as many things about OCD or anxiety-related disorders as possible?

TL;DR

Should a graduate student focus broadly on many areas of psychopathology, or become as proficient as possible with a small number of conditions?

Thank you in advance.

 

[albatross_at_crossroads]

Hi 🙂
Disclaimer: I have experience with both Canadian and US clinical psych programs, so it's a mixed bag 🙂

I don't fully understand what you mean by not being able to advertise as a specialist if you're a clinical psychologist - I have met several Canadian clin psychs that talk about specific conditions that they specialize in/ treat, including but not limited to OCD, on their websites. Does the CPA prevent this in some way?

If you want to practice in the US, it is indeed a good idea to try to do your internship there and also a post-doc/ fellowship after. Quite a few Canadian psychologist made the switch that way - I know a few, but they are not in private practice. For this, it is best to make your CV as competitive as possible for internship (so a good number of publications and a good number of clinical hours). For clinical hours though, the advice I received was that it should be as diversified as possible, since competitive internships want to see that you challenged yourself and that you had quality experiences.

My own opinion on this is that it's better for your development to gain a broader knowledge base in the early part of your program, and maybe consider specializing later on. Since you're already exposed to so much OCD related info through your research, I would think it would be worth it to explore other areas and ways to increase your clinical skills. Since your focus is private practice, your clinical abilities will be paramount. Tangential, I would also add some business skills/knowledge to your outside learning 😉

 

[PsyDr]

OCD symptoms can present in a wide variety of domains. Get training in a wide variety of things, and ask how that could apply to OCD.

Off the top of my head, OCD could impact:

1) sex
2) diet
3) engagement in healthcare
4) career choice
5) mood disorders
6) substance abuse
7) religion


The prevalence of OCD is like 1%. So that's like 380,000 total patients in all 10 provinces of Canada, with most being in Ontario. You know how much of it is in northern Canada? Nunavut! (rimshot).

For your financial wellbeing, you should probably be able to treat other disorders.

 

[Big5Club]

Good afternoon all,

After lurking this forum for many years while completing my undergraduate, I was accepted into a graduate program in clinical psychology, and my first subjectively post-worthy question has arisen.

I am in a Canadian program, where technically I am an MSc student, before being allowed to carry on with my doctorate. I received funding (18,500/year) for my master's research but have to re-apply for federal funding for my Ph.D., which is significantly more lucrative (~30,000 CAD).

Federal funding at the doctoral is primarily based on research output during previous years of study; therefore, I have tried to remain diligent in working on publications in my last year of undergraduate and since my graduate program started. By the end of this calendar year, I will have three publications, all second author, and I was approached and accepted writing a book chapter -- mainly to increase my writing proficiency.

My issue is, I have zero interest in working in academia when/if I graduate. My research is on mental compulsions in OCD. I want to foster clinical experiences, especially an internship in a large American OCD/anxiety-disorder clinic, and eventually, open my clinical practice. I would prefer to do this in America, but there is no guarantee that this will occur.

The confounding issue is that in most (if not all) Canadian provinces, you can't advertise yourself as a specialist when you're a clinical psychologist. Therefore, I question what I should be doing with my time outside of clinical, classes, and research. Considering that my research is narrowly focused on OCD, should my outside reading concentrate on other topics, or should I attempt to learn as many things about OCD or anxiety-related disorders as possible?

TL;DR

Should a graduate student focus broadly on many areas of psychopathology, or become as proficient as possible with a small number of conditions?

Thank you in advance.

Given your research is in your specialty area, I think focusing broadly in school makes the most sense especially since anxiety/OCD shares transdiagnostic processes with many other disorders. Internship/postdoc is a wonderful time to really narrow your focus on what you want to specialize in.

 

[summerbabe]

Should a graduate student focus broadly on many areas of psychopathology, or become as proficient as possible with a small number of conditions?

I think this will depend on your career goals. If you're pretty confident you want to specialize in one/a few things for perhaps your whole career, focusing in these areas could make sense.

However, one of the big benefits of continuing to gain varied experiences beyond just learning something new is to 'test' out what it will be like to potentially do this work in the future.

I'm a generalist who likely won't be satisfied working with the same population/setting for too long so I'm really glad that between grad school, internship postdoc and early career, I was able to gain a bunch of different experiences (trauma, SMI, acute psych, suicide prevention, rehab, voc, etc) that could help open doors for future switches while also figuring out stuff I likely won't want to do again.