The Florida Department of Corrections is now the third largest state corrections system in the country and is considered a national leader in corrections due to its innovations and insistence on quality. Health Services is an integral and constitutionally required element in the Florida Department of Corrections’ services, and is responsible for the physical and mental care of all offenders in its care, custody, and control. To meet the mental health needs of all offenders we have several levels of care, including outpatient, and four levels of inpatient care: crisis stabilization, transitional care, infirmary care, and the Correctional Mental Health Institute (court ordered inpatient treatment).
The offender population ranges in age from 17-80. Interns will work with inmates with a variety of physical ailments and impairments, including chronic, progressive disorders, and visual, hearing, and ambulation limitations. The interns will also care for incarcerated patients who suffer from a wide array of mental disorders, ranging from serious, chronic mental illness and progressive disorders, to transient crisis based disturbances. The full spectrum of Axis I and Axis II mental disorders may be seen, however, most commonly treated disorders will include the following: depressive, anxiety, psychotic, organic, substance abuse, cyclic mood, borderline, schizoid, schizotypical, antisocial and narcissistic. Developmental disorders such as mental retardation and learning disabilities are also seen, and special efforts to identify and care for these vulnerable offenders are undertaken.
The patient population served is racially, culturally, and socially diverse. The racial composition is 50% African American, 46% white, 3% Hispanic, and 1% other. Our interns work primarily with men but will also work with some male and female youthful offenders, and some adult females. Some patients have been physicians and lawyers, while others have little education and have been homeless. Sixty three percent of our inmates have not achieved General Equivalency Diploma (GED) preparation literacy skills. Some are from other countries and speak other languages, with a significant proportion speaking Spanish. About 5% of inmates are non-U.S. citizens, with the largest number coming from Cuba, Mexico, and various Central and South American nations.
Multidisciplinary Team work is essential to successful work within the Florida Department of Corrections. A typical multidisciplinary team is employed for mental health service delivery that involves the integration of the patient with psychological, medical, and nursing staff. However, coordination and cooperation between mental health and security staff is another component to the interdisciplinary teamwork required to work within the Corrections System. As one might expect in a mental health service, our masters' level staff, practica students, and pre-doctoral interns are supervised, exclusively, by Senior Psychologists. In turn, the Senior Psychologists have dual supervision. They are supervised administratively by the Chief Health Officer, and clinically by the Regional Mental Health Consultant, a licensed psychologist. The Regional Mental Health Consultant is clinically and programmatically responsible for mental health service delivery at the institution. However, the Warden is the ultimate authority at the institution and is responsible to see that required mental health services are provided and that the safety and security of the staff and inmates is maintained. Therefore, the the Warden's responsibility for our services is paramount. Coordination and teamwork with security is essential to our multidisciplinary team.. This interdependence of security and mental health is necessary and logical given that institutional security, public safety and proper care of our inmates are all essential to the Florida Department of Corrections’ functioning.
Mission
The internship's mission is to provide training that will produce postdoctoral /entry level psychologists who have the requisite knowledge and skills for successful entry into the practice of professional psychology in general clinical or correctional settings and eventually become licensed psychologists. Therefore, the internship endeavors to create solidly trained generalists while simultaneously affording opportunities for specialization in correctional psychology. This is consistent with the Florida Department of Corrections’ mission to protect the public safety, to ensure the safety of Department personnel, and to provide proper care and supervision of all offenders under our jurisdiction while assisting, as appropriate, their reentry into society. Both missions work to ensure that interns are trained to provide quality mental health care in an ethical and highly secure environment.
The Department of Corrections is invested in the internship program. For this reason, rotations and other training opportunities are designed to enhance the students training and skills rather than for the convenience of other staff. The internship provides short-term and long-term benefits for the Florida Department of Corrections. An excellent training environment ensures high quality, in-depth patient assessment and care, and is considered professionally and intellectually stimulating for our staff. Additionally, a rewarding internship experience may lead students to seek employment within the Florida Department of Corrections after graduation. Both factors provide impetus to create and maintain a high-caliber training program.
Maintaining membership in the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC) and attaining accreditation by the American Psychological Association (APA) are goals of the program. Our first internship class began in July of 2007 allowing us to apply for and gain membership in APPIC in the Fall of 2007 as we had targeted. We intend to obtain APA accreditation as soon as possible and have designed our internship program accordingly.
Philosophy and Training Model
The Florida Department of Corrections Predoctoral Internship adheres to a philosophy of experiential learning to train and prepare our interns for a career as professional psychologists. Opportunities are provided for them to learn through concrete clinical experiences, abstract conceptualization, reflective observation, and active experimentation. Experiential learning produces awareness, knowledge, skills, and the ability to apply these different types of learning to future experiences.
Our Predoctoral Internship is organized around a Practitioner-Scholar Model where scientific training is integrated into the practice training component (Stoltenberg et al., 2000). We view science and practice as interlocking skills that form the foundation of psychological knowledge and its application. Our interns are expected to learn to apply psychology in a manner that is guided by psychological theory and research. As part of Practitioner-Scholar training, interns are expected to develop reflective skills and to learn to use their clinical experience as an opportunity to apply scientific concepts. Research is not a requirement of the internship. However, interns are expected to learn about evidence-based practice, and be familiar with and use interventions that are supported by research. Applicants who come from scientist-practitioner graduate programs should find that our internship program complements, and is consistent with, the long-term goals of a scientist-practitioner training program.
Structure
The internship consists of 2,000 hours over a one-year period. Interns are paid for 1,900 of those hours and must complete an additional 100 hours without pay. The internship begins July 1 and ends on June 30 of the succeeding year. The Florida Department of Corrections funds four interns per year.
