Oregon State University welcomed its first cohort of six clinical psychology Ph.D. students this fall, opening a program that aims to increase both access to and quality of psychological counseling in Oregon.
Starting in fall 2025, doctoral students will also see patients in a supervised community clinic setting on campus, adding much-needed providers to Oregon’s overburdened mental health care landscape.
The program is geared toward doctoral students who are interested not only in practicing psychology but in researching and developing clinical solutions to complex mental health issues.
“The need for mental health services is not new; however, it is increasing,” said Bridget Klest, director of clinical training in the School of Psychological Science in the College of Liberal Arts. She cited reasons such as reduced stigma for seeking mental health care and the COVID-19 pandemic bringing issues to the surface for many people.
“We’ve never really had the supply of therapists to meet the demand,” Klest said. “We’re not going to be able to solve that problem by creating this program, but we’ll work at chipping away at the problem. If we can not only train our students to be good therapists but also to disseminate good therapy techniques, that helps a lot more.”
The research side of the program will see students working to understand clinical problems, to develop new interventions and to find ways to make therapy and therapists more effective at addressing patient concerns.
Students will also research the best strategies for sharing those findings with practicing psychologists in the field so those providers can keep up to date with evidence-based therapies.
“Our focus is about underserved populations and dissemination to rural populations, in terms of both the clinical work and the research, with social justice as a really strong value of our program,” Klest said.
When the clinic opens next fall, program students will be trained to provide cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to patients who are deemed likely to benefit from that therapy modality. Students will be closely supervised by licensed doctoral-level clinical psychologists, who will oversee the clinical work and teach them the skills they need. As the students progress, they will take more and more control of their patients’ care.
This clinic will complement campus mental health care provided by OSU’s Counseling & Psychological Services (CAPS), and will also be open to the community, not just OSU students.
“We might be able to take the edge off very slightly; help CAPS a tiny bit,” she said. “As the clinic grows we expect to help out a bit more.”
The doctoral program requires students to be on site in Corvallis for five years, as well as complete a yearlong clinical internship elsewhere.
“It takes a long time to train somebody in both research and clinical work and make sure they’re competent in doing both,” Klest said.
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