Peak Pre-Doctoral Internship
Developing thoughtful, skilled, and compassionate psychologists prepared for independent practice.
Welcome to Peak
The Peak Behavioral Health Doctoral Psychology Internship Program provides a full-time, 12-month training experience designed to prepare emerging psychologists for independent practice as health service psychologists. Interns receive broad, competency-based clinical training grounded in evidence-based practice, interdisciplinary collaboration, ethical decision-making, cultural responsiveness, and individualized professional development.
❋ Evidence-Based Practice
Develop clinical skills grounded in scientific thinking and contemporary psychological practice.
❋ Individualized Training
Build upon your existing strengths while developing experiences aligned with your professional goals.
❋ Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Work alongside psychologists, counselors, behavior analysts, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, and other professionals.
❋ Leadership & Professional Identity
Develop not only as a clinician, but as a consultant, colleague, leader, and future psychologist
The Peak Training Experience
One Internship. Broad Clinical Experience.
Training included:
Comprehensive psychological assessment
Evidence-based intervention
Consultation
Interdisciplinary care
Supervision
Professional development
Ethical decision-making
Cultural responsiveness
Supervision Designed for Growth
❋ Individual Supervision
Regular Supervision with licensed psychologists focused on case conceptualization, clinical-decision making, skill development, and professional growth.
❋ Ongoing Feedback
Interns receive frequent, developmental feedback designed to build competence while encouraging increasing independence.
❋ Individual Supervision
Supervisors work collaboratively with interns to identify strengths, growth areas, and professional goals and to shape training experiences accordingly.
❋ Didactics & Consultation
Structured educational and consultation experiences supplement direct clinical work and support development across the profession-wide competencies.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s):
-
The Peak Behavioral Health Doctoral Psychology Internship Program is a full-time, 12-month, 2,000-hour training experience designed to prepare interns for entry-level practice as health service psychologists. Interns generally participate in internship activities approximately 40 hours per week.
-
Interns participate in year-long longitudinal rotations rather than short block rotations. Each intern completes a Primary Rotation three days per week and a Secondary Rotation two days per week. The primary rotation represents the intern’s major area of clinical emphasis, while the secondary rotation is designed to broaden experience across additional populations, referral questions, or intervention approaches.
-
Each intern is assigned a licensed doctoral psychologist who serves as the Primary Supervisor throughout the internship year. Primary supervisors provide a minimum of two hours of individual supervision each week. Supervision is designed to support professional growth, review documentation and clinical performance, provide timely feedback, support ethical decision-making, and encourage increasing clinical independence.
-
A typical week may include 15–24 hours of direct client service, 7–10 hours of documentation, scoring, interpretation, and report writing, 2 hours of individual supervision, 1 hour of group supervision, 2 hours of didactic seminar, 1–3 hours of consultation/interdisciplinary meetings, and 1–3 hours of research, professional development, and administrative training activities. The distribution is a guideline rather than a productivity quota and may vary based on clinical and training needs.
-
Applicants must be doctoral students in clinical, counseling, or school psychology who are enrolled in an APA- or CPA-accredited doctoral program and approved by their academic program to apply for internship. Applicants must have completed at least three years of graduate training, at least three integrated psychological reports, and graduate training in ethics, diversity, assessment, intervention, psychopathology, and research. Application materials include the AAPI Online application, cover letter, CV, graduate transcripts, three Standard Reference Forms, and one de-identified integrated psychological evaluation report.
-
Successful completion requires 2,000 total supervised internship hours over no fewer than 12 months, at least 500 hours of direct client contact, at least 100 hours of regularly scheduled individual supervision from licensed psychologists, and at least 100 additional hours of didactic instruction. Interns must also complete required rotations, achieve expected competency benchmarks, and demonstrate readiness for entry-level practice as a health service psychologist.