California Institute of Integral Studies Launches Groundbreaking Community Mental Heal...( Master's degree program addresses...),Health

Master's degree program addresses growing mental health workforce crisis

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In response to the growing mental health workforce crisis, California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) will launch a groundbreaking graduate degree program in Community Mental Health in fall 2008.

The program will offer an M.A. in Counseling Psychology with a concentration in Community Mental Health, as well as an advanced Certificate in Community Mental Health for those with a master's degree in counseling psychology. The two programs are designed specifically to help build a diverse mental health workforce trained to provide effective and culturally competent therapeutic services in the public sector. Both build upon CIIS's long and successful history of educating people to be licensed Marriage and Family Therapists (MFTs), and its commitment to increase the diversity of counseling psychologists and psychotherapists.

"This program has the potential to serve as a national model for training counseling psychologists who can work in public and community mental health agencies fulfilling the needs of a diverse clientele," said Barbara Garcia, Deputy Director of Health, San Francisco Department of Public Health, who serves as one of the community advisors to the program.

The San Francisco Bay Area's need for culturally competent community mental health providers is expected to intensify over the next few decades. According to Garcia, San Francisco will need to replace nearly 70 percent of its public mental health workforce due to retirement within the next 10 years -- a trend that is echoed throughout the state and the nation.

Most graduate psychology programs implicitly prepare graduates to go into private practice. CIIS's Community Mental Health counseling psychology master's degree will train students to work specifically in community and public health clinics. In these settings, therapis
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