As anyone who has spent time in the mental health trenches knows, Texas has a severe shortage of psychologists in some areas of the state. Potentially contributing to this problem is the lack of accredited pre-doctoral internship programs in the state necessary to attract psychologists-in-training. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), 25 percent of doctoral
psychology students who apply for an internship walk away without one.
The Hogg Foundation is committed to strengthening the psychology workforce in the state of Texas. Through the Texas Psychology Internships and Texas Psychology Internships Accreditation initiatives, the foundation has committed more than $2.8 million in grants (through Fiscal Year 2017) to mental health service providers for the purpose of creating new pre-doctoral psychology internship and pursuing APA accreditation. The aim of the program is to attract doctoral psychology students to careers as mental health professionals in Texas.
We are thrilled to report that three of our grantees, the University of Houston-Clear Lake, Travis County Juvenile Probation Department, and Scott & White Healthcare System, have recently become members of the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC), an important step in the path towards APA accreditation. APPIC matches qualified students with postdoctoral and internship training opportunities, and membership is a feather in the cap of any internship program.
Additionally, in early 2013 we plan to fund additional entities that have existing pre-doctoral internship programs and are APPIC members to pursue APA accreditation.
Dr. Michele Guzmán, PhD, assistant director of research and evaluation at the Hogg Foundation, oversees the program. “We want to fund well-established internships so that with a little bit of stimulus, they’ll be able to rapidly gain accreditation and have the validation the field increasingly requires,” said Guzmán in the December 2012 issue of Monitor on Psychology, an APA publication.