Friends Hospital Description

Friends Hospital was founded in 1813 and was the first private non-profit hospital in America devoted exclusively to helping and serving the needs of the mentally ill. Currently, Friends Hospital has a total of 192 inpatient beds and a number of specialty units including eating disorders, older adult, general adult, children (5-12), adolescent (13-18) and a womens unit. There are also partial hospital programs providing a continuum of care for some of these inpatient services. Outpatient testing and assessment services and both adult residential programs are located on the main hospital campus. The hospital also provides the community with a state of the art 24/7 psychiatric crisis center. Taken together, these programs and resources serve a heterogeneous patient population of all ages, racial, socioeconomic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds with a wide range of psychiatric diagnoses, co-morbid diagnoses, and personal strengths and resources.


Behavioral Healthcare Externship

Training Opportunities

Friends Hospital has a longstanding commitment to academic and professional training. For over 15 years the hospital has sponsored a yearlong pre-doctoral internship program in clinical psychology that is accredited by the American Psychological Association. Training and educational affiliations exist with Friends HospitaTemple University, Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for psychiatric residents, nursing students and other trainees.

Due to a sustained high level of interest from regional graduate and undergraduate training programs, Friends Hospital has developed this externship to provide formal training and clinical opportunities for a broad range of students preparing to enter the mental health services field. These positions will not be funded, but will offer flexibility in terms of hours and types of opportunities and will provide formal and informal didactic training and clinical/administrative supervision. The externship is administered by the doctoral internship Training Director, and includes the participation of the hospitals medical, nursing and professional psychology and social work staff, post-doctoral psychology fellows and residents and the doctoral level interns (this is described in more detail in the section below.) Supervision and training opportunities may also be arranged with other clinical and administrative hospital staff.