The Clinic Expands Community Mental Health Services
“The only constant is change” sums up this past year for UW's Psychological Services and Training Center (the Clinic).
The Clinic provides foundational science-informed training in psychotherapy and assessment for our second year and above clinical psychology doctoral students as well as affordable psychotherapy to the UW and larger Seattle area community.
In the past year, the Clinic moved into the beautifully renovated Kincaid Hall and added two specialty clinics: the Marsha M. Linehan Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) clinic for clients with serious mental health issues and the CALM clinic for the treatment of anxiety disorders. The Clinic also partnered with the Washington Department of Health (DOH) to help address the surge in behavioral health problems in youth, and agreed to serve as the host agency for a telehealth Stepped Care proof of concept program.
Remarkably, this physical and organizational growth took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Clinic rapidly pivoting from providing exclusively in-person to entirely online psychotherapy and assessment services. Recently, the Clinic shifted again to offer a “hybrid” version in which clients can receive services either in-person or remotely.
CALM Clinic
In keeping with the Clinic's science-based mission, three clinical area faculty members -- Drs. Angela Fang, Shannon Dorsey, and Lori Zoellner -- now co-direct the newly formed CALM clinic. They bring extensive expertise in OCD, PTSD and other anxiety disorders, and all are committed to training the next generation of clinical psychologists in the provision of evidence-based treatments for anxiety for both children and adults.
Stepped Care: Providing Trauma-Focused Tele-mental Health Services to WA Youth
The Clinic is the host agency for an innovative partnership with the Washington DOH. Inspired by Governor Inslee’s Emergency Proclamation 21-05, the DOH COVID-19 Behavioral Health Group is implementing a Stepped Care program to increase access to mental health services via telehealth for at-risk youth ages 8-17. As host agency, the Clinic will administer the Stepped Care program, which involves training graduate students from around the state, including several UW students, to provide Trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) via telehealth to trauma-exposed youth with mental health concerns. CALM clinic faculty are among many other clinicians from around the state who have volunteered to serve as supervisors. The pilot will run through the end of the academic year; depending on the project's outcomes, and availability of funding, the Stepped Care model could be scaled up to meet the growing need for mental health services for youth across the state.
Marsha M. Linehan Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) Clinic
With Dr. Marsha Linehan’s retirement, our department lost a luminary in the field who had dedicated her life’s work to developing DBT, an evidence-based treatment for people with serious mental health problems. However this year, with the help of many generous donors and a gift from the Linehan family, we hired Dr. Vibh Forsythe Cox to create and direct the Marsha M. Linehan (MML) DBT clinic. The new MML DBT clinic honors Dr. Linehan’s legacy of training students to work with clients with serious mental health disorders, many of whom struggle with the desire to die. The DBT clinic trains students to help clients work toward a life worth living.
If you are interested in supporting the DBT clinic, you can do so by making a donation to the Friends of Psychology Fund and noting 'Linehan fund' in your donation. You can also contact Dr. Vibh Forsythe Cox at DBTclinic@uw.edu to learn about giving opportunities.