Academics West (New York) is still looking for a postdoctoral fellow for the 2024-2025 school year! AW is a fantastic place for anyone looking for additional training working with students with moderate to severe psychopathology and assessing risk to determine higher level of care. Please see below for additional information and forward to whoever you think may be a good fit.
Academics West is an accredited therapeutic school designed for children and adolescents with diverse social, emotional, and academics needs. Our therapeutic education program provides
The psychology training program offers trainees an active role on a multidisciplinary treatment team. Trainees provide individual and group psychotherapy to students with a wide range of presenting concerns, including anxiety, depression, learning differences, ADHD, OCD, defiant behaviors, and school refusal. Our students have often engaged in residential treatment, wilderness programs, intensive outpatient programs, and other inpatient hospitalization programs. So, trainees will be exposed to students with a wide variety of clinical presentations and level of risk, gaining extensive experience in risk assessment and determining appropriateness of higher level of care. Trainees will also have the opportunity to learn treatment interventions through CBT, DBT, PMT, and behavioral perspectives. Our goal is to introduce our externs to the various treatment modalities within psychological treatment, to support their professional identity as they progress throughout their training career. Finally, trainees will receive formal didactic seminars from specialists in their respective fields in a small group format and have opportunity to learn parent training skills.
Trainees also participate in the therapeutic milieu through our on-call system and consult with teachers and outside providers (i.e. psychiatrist, psychologist, nutritionist, family therapist, etc.) to provide comprehensive care. Trainees receive training in nonviolent crisis intervention and provide crisis support to students as needed. There is an emphasis on CBT and other evidence-based interventions, and trainees participate in weekly individual supervision, group supervision, treatment team meetings, and didactic trainings. Given the nature of our school setting, trainees will learn explicit strategies to establish rapport, gain the trust, and consult with teachers. Examples include translating neuropsychological evaluations to teachers and helping teachers modify their classroom structure to best support the student in class.
Interested applicants should send a cover letter, CV, and 3 letters of recommendations to drthomas@academicswest.com.