Agency Description

Gateways Hospital is an accredited hospital that provides intensive and acute inpatient psychiatric care for adolescents and adults who have limited resources. It is a private, non-profit agency that contracts with local and state entities for funding. The population served consists of individual who are from diverse cultural backgrounds. The hospital serves those who are severely mentally ill and exhibit symptoms associated with a wide range of psychiatric diagnoses. Patients often have a secondary diagnosis of substance abuse. The clinical staff is composed of a multidisciplinary team who have expertise in the psychiatric and psychological care of patients and their caretakers.

Agency Mission

The Gateways mission is to create and maintain mental health facilities and programs, including an acute care psychiatric hospital, to serve the needs of mentally ill persons requiring inpatient, outpatient and rehabilitative services, treatment and care, regardless of race, creed, nationality or sex, including persons referred to or placed in such facilities or programs by courts or other public agencies.

Population

The adolescent patients range in age from 13 through 17 and the adults from 18 to 60. They live in the entire Los Angeles County area and represent many cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The patients are uninsured so the majority have limited financial resources. Most of the adults have chronic, severe mental illness that includes both affective and psychotic components. The adolescents are more varied in diagnosis, most have a major affective disorder and some have a psychotic disorder. Many of the patients have a secondary substance abuse diagnosis.

Staff (#, Degree, Prof. Lic.)

# of Psychologists: 3

# of Psychiatrists: 2

# of Social workers: 2

# of NP: 7

# of OTR/L: 1

Required days and times

Monday-Friday: 8:00am-4:30pm

Training and Education Offered

Our objective is to provide the training, supervision and modeling that results in a competent, professional psychologist. We stress the importance of learning assessment skills through psychological testing and directed interviewing. We guide interns to conceptualize their patients using a theoretical model. We help them develop and implement short term goals and increase their knowledge of different interventions. We want students to develop flexibility in their approach to treating patients and to develop empathy and compassion for the severely mentally ill. We also emphasize the importance of conducting themselves as professionals. Our training program consists of four hours of supervision each week. Each week there are two hours of individual supervision, one hour of group didactic, and one hour of group supervision with the interns and post-doctoral fellows. One hour of assessment lab is provided monthly and ongoing individual assessment supervision is provided when students are working on a testing case. The students are accompanied by licensed staff on some individual therapy and group therapy sessions so that interventions can be modeled and the students' interaction with the patients can be directly observed.

X-Cultural Training

Responsibilities

The interns conduct initial assessments of patients, individual and group therapy and psychological testing with adult and adolescent patients. They utilize cognitive and projective instruments to perform psychodiagnostic assessments. They also work with the social work staff to conduct family meetings. The students are involved in crisis intervention, treatment planning and report writing. They are well integrated members of the treatment team. The Psychology Department plays an important role at Gateways.