The Duke Child & Family Study Center and the Duke Hospital Clinics are the primary training sites for child psychology interns where they provide supervised assessment, treatment and consultation with a broad range of children, adolescents and families treated at Duke University Medical Center.
Interns will spend approximately 50% of their time in the area of concentration and after the match will be able to rank their preferences for minor rotations based on their interests, training goals, and rotation availability.
The Child Psychology track offers the following four intern options.
Concentration Options
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Child Clinical – Autism (APPIC Program Code: 141327)
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Child Clinical – General (APPIC Program Code: 141324)
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Child Clinical – Trauma (APPIC Program Code: 141325)
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Child Pediatric Psychology (APPIC Program Code: 141320)
Clinical Rotation Descriptions
- Adult and child clinical services
- Federally-funded (e.g., NIMH) research grants
- Industry-funded (e.g., pharmaceutical companies) clinical trials
- Parent training group
- Child coping skills group
- Adult ADHD cognitive-behavioral therapy group
- Academic support skills training for middle and high school students (group or individual treatment)
- Individual treatment cases (typically focused on parent training or academic support skills for children, and cognitive-behavioral therapy for adults).
Interns are exposed to a number of clinical research activities within the Duke ADHD Program through regular didactic presentations. These include two seminal NIH-funded, multi-site treatment outcome studies:
- Multi-modal Treatment Study of ADHD Children (MTA)
- Preschool ADHD Treatment Study (PATS)
- Dr. John Mitchell: NIDA-sponsored study of affective regulation in adult ADHD cigarette smokers and other NIH-funded projects on mobile health
- Dr. Naomi Davis: sponsor-funded study on non-pharmacological digital therapy for children with ADHD
- Dr. Jessica Lunsford-Avery: NIMH-funded project on sleep and neurocognition in adolescents with ADHD
Supervisors for the ADHD Clinic and Rotation:
- Early intervention and prevention services
- Assessment of traumatic sequelae
- Trauma-focused treatment
- Forensic evaluations
- Family and legal support
The rotation at CCFH involves working primarily with evidence-based treatments with a culturally diverse clientele of traumatized youth and their families. Interns will have an opportunity to learn several trauma informed interventions (e.g., Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy). Interns will also utilize a range of treatment modalities, including:
- Individual therapy with children and adolescents
- Family therapy, parent education
- Intensive in-home treatment
- Community-based interventions
- Group interventions with children, adolescents and parents
The intern serves as a liaison with multiple community agencies, including schools, social services and the court system for each assigned case and also participates in initial evaluations and limited psychological assessments.
Interns on this rotation participate in a year-long didactic series on trauma and trauma-informed interventions and services. Live and video-based supervision is available. Supervision is generally conducted through a combination of individual and treatment specific group discussions, as well as multi-disciplinary team presentations.
Supervisors for the CCFH Clinic and Rotation
Visit the Center for Child and Family Health for more information.
The team at Duke’s center for adolescent substance use treatment works with families to create customized plans that help young people overcome alcohol and other drug problems. Our treatment options include outpatient and intensive outpatient treatment programs. Interns will participate in all intensive outpatient activities including team meetings, individual and group interventions.
Supervisors for CAST
The Autism Concentration Intern will be the only intern with a placement in the Center for Autism & Brain Development and should have some background or special interest in autism.
- Pediatric neurologists
- Pediatric primary care physicians
- Speech-language pathologists
- Medical geneticists
- Gastroenterologists
- Developmental pediatricians
Supervisors for the Center for Autism & Brain Development
The Duke Center for Eating Disorders treats conditions in which a trusting and responsive relationship to oneself and particularly to one’s body is disrupted. In addition to eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, and binge eating disorder, our focus includes other psychosomatic disorders such as pediatric pain. This focus also includes helping individuals to feel seen and understood as their authentic selves. Thus, a focus of our work is working with families of individuals who identity with diverse identities to help promote acceptance and understanding.
We have a weekly didactic seminar and weekly team meeting with psychiatrists, specialists in family medicine, social work, adolescent medicine, and psychology to discuss challenging cases and coordinate care. We treat individuals from the ages of 3 and up so interns can self-select the developmental stages they are comfortable working with or use this as an opportunity to try their skills with a new age group.
This year we are launching or continuing some exciting initiatives: an NIMH clinical trial for 5 to 9 year olds with ARFID; a parent group for parents of transgender or gender diverse teens, an online middle school group for ARFID; and integrating DukeLine (add link to Adult CBT section too) into the internship experience for supervision opportunities (DukeLine is an anonymous peer support text line of trained undergrads supporting other undergrads).
Supervisors for Eating Disorders
Supervisors for the Family Studies Program & Clinic
Outpatient Pediatric Neuropsychology Clinic
- Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Program
- Pediatric Hematology/Oncology
- Pediatric Neuro-Oncology
- Pediatric Neurology and Neurosurgery (Epilepsy Monitoring Unit; Autoimmune Brain Disease Clinic)
- Pediatric Genetics
- Undiagnosed Disease Network Program
Consultation-Liaison Service
The pediatric psychology intern also works as part of the Child Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison (CL) service at Duke Children’s Hospital. The CL service is a multidisciplinary team that includes psychologists, child psychiatrists, social work case manager, residents, fellows and medical students. The CL team serves patients throughout the Children’s Hospital with a broad range of conditions.
Consultations are initiated by members of a child’s medical or surgical team. Common reasons that consultation may be requested from psychology include:
- Adjustment to illness
- Coping with acute or chronic pain
- Assessment of emotional or behavioral concerns
- Family coping and support
- Treatment adherence, etc.
The intern may participate in initial consults or follow-up care for patients being followed on the service. All of the patients seen by a member of the CL team have been admitted as inpatients to the Children's Hospital.
If continuing mental health services would be helpful after a patient is discharged from a medical floor, they may be referred within Duke or provided with referrals for providers closer to home. Interns may have the option to provide outpatient therapy should the patient’s care remain within the Duke.
Pediatric Chronic Pain and Somatic Symptoms Program
The pediatric psychology intern may have the opportunity to work in this multidisciplinary program serving youth with a variety of chronic pain conditions. The treatment team is composed of psychologists, physicians, nurse practitioners, social workers, physical therapists and occupational therapists.
As part of this rotation, the intern provides initial evaluations as well as weekly CBT for chronic pain; participates in weekly case conferences; and serves as a consultant to other members of the treatment team as well as to patients’ schools. This outpatient clinic takes place at The Duke Child and Family Study Center.
Program Staff
Pediatric psychology is composed of medical psychology faculty, post-doctoral fellows, interns, clinical psychology graduate students, psycho-diagnostic technicians and support staff who work in a hierarchical supervision model.
Didactics
Supervisors for Pediatric Psychology
- CBT case formulation
- Contextual functional analysis
- CBT for childhood anxiety
- CBT E/RP for OCD
- CBT for adolescent depression
- Assessment and treatment of school refusal