Mental Health Training Practicum Student Supervision Case

Supervision Case Example

•You are supervising a practicum student with some previous mental health training and experience. Your trainee is a 30-year-old, Caucasian male graduate student in a doctoral psychologyprogram, having completed a master’s program in psychology where he had a several month practicum. Since then, he has worked in a group private practice, mostly conducting intake interviews. He is eager to learn at his placement in a community mental health agency with a diverse patient population, primarily African-American, a new population for him.He is working with a 15-year-old African-American male and having difficulty connecting with him. He tells you that to better connect, he has been talking with the adolescent in between sessions on Skype and sharing his own experiences with discrimination and mistreatment while growing up and with fellow practicum students to try and “relate” to a patient from a “minority population”.

Supervision Case Example

•What are the ethical and legal issues that you have identified in the supervision example

•How would you bring these to the attention of the trainee

•What actions would you consider taking with the trainee and their therapy work with the patient?