Panel Discussion 4 - Affirmative Therapies Means Psychosis Too: Bridging the Research-practice Gap in Doctoral Training for SMI

People with serious mental illness (SMI) experience disparities in access to both mental and physical healthcare, contributing to a ~20 year shorter lifespan on average (Correll et al., 2022; Roberts et al., 2022). People with SMI present in all clinical settings, however, most professional psychologists have inadequate exposure to the science and practice of evidence-based care for SMI. This begins at the doctoral level. Few faculty in clinical psychology programs have expertise in SMI, and among those that do, most focus on psychobiology and neuroscience (O’Connor & Yanos, 2021, 2022). Psychologists are pioneers developing, evaluating, and implementing EBPs for SMI, yet few doctoral training programs include applied SMI research or recovery-oriented training in their curriculum. The lack of training in SMI research contributes to widespread misunderstandings about SMI across service settings, widening the research-practice gap (Treichler & Jones, 2023). It is imperative that clinical psychology doctoral programs provide fundamental information and training opportunities in SMI practice and implementation advances to prepare future psychologists for careers across settings (Rbeiz et al., 2024). Therefore, this panel will focus on the need for increased doctoral level clinical psychology training in SMI to bridge the implementation gap between research and application. Panelists are four SMI-focused psychologists and 1 psychology trainee, all in different settings, who have integrated research and practice to advance care for this underserved population. Panelists will discuss the application of SMI focused and recovery-oriented research insights to bolster clinical psychology graduate training. Discussions will focus on the recovery movement, strategies to integrate relevant information about SMI into the general curriculum, and potential advantages of including SMI specific training opportunities to better prepare clinical psychology students for their careers, regardless of setting. Increasing doctoral level training of research and practice in SMI is critical to ensuring that psychologists may serve as change agents for individuals with SMI to affirming, evidence-based support across all clinical and research settings.