Tucked away on the fourth floor of Jabara Hall, Wichita State's Psychology Clinic has quietly provided services to Wichita and surrounding communities.

But in the past year, the clinic and clinical psychology doctoral program have created some national chatter.

Based on several criteria, the program was recognized in a study by the American Psychology Association in October 2013 as one of a few “hidden gems” in clinical psychology doctoral programs. Specifically, the program was noted for its ability to match students with nationally competitive, predoctoral internships.

Within this criterion, Wichita State was ranked No. 3 in the nation.

“Being recognized at the national level demonstrates how hard the faculty here have worked to create a strong program and the excellent work they do,” said Steven Huprich, director of clinical training for the Ph.D. program.

Serving the community

The clinic’s primary purpose on campus is to serve as a training facility to students in the clinical psychology doctoral training program. The students are supervised by doctoral-level psychologists.

But it does much more than provide training experience, says Helen Reiner, the clinic’s director.

“By utilizing students in training, we’re able to provide services to the community at a very reduced rate,” Reiner said. “We are able to offer diagnostic and therapeutic services for children and adults, for a variety of psychological issues.”

The clinic, which is located at 412 Jabara Hall, also offers psychological evaluations, anxiety support groups, psychosocial skills training and additional services. It also provides individual therapy for adults and children for a variety of concerns including depression, anxiety, grief, loss, behavioral problems and parenting.

Services are based on a sliding scale, depending on income level and ability to pay. The clinic does not accept insurance, but clients will not be turned away if they are unable to pay.

“More and more people in the community are finding it difficult to access services at low cost,” Reiner said, “and so we have become the primary resource for low-cost mental health services.”

The clinic is a primary referral option for a number of organizations in the community, as well as collaborating with other departments on campus, such as Upward Bound, the Autism Interdisciplinary Team and WSU’s Evelyn Hendren Cassat Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic.

The variety of clients, Huprich said, provides real-world experience for WSU’s psychology students.

Huprich says the clinic serves as one of many valuable training experiences which eventually makes Ph.D. students attractive to employers after graduation, such as at veterans’ hospitals.

“One of the things that surprised me here is just the magnitude of how much service this clinic provides to the community,” said Huprich, who is new to Wichita State this semester. “And yet, I don’t think a lot of folks on campus know that we’re here.”

Future plans

One difference between the Psychology Clinic and the WSU's better-known Counseling and Testing Center, Reiner said, is that the Counseling and Testing Center primarily serves students while the Psychology Clinic primarily serves the community.

For someone who isn’t familiar with the university, finding the clinic’s facilities on the fourth floor of a building in the middle of campus can be difficult. So in the future, the clinic hopes to improve signage and expand parking, as well as update its space and technological resources.

That will be important, Reiner says, because the need for mental health services is something that won’t go away.

“With needs for mental health services growing, we wanted to recognize the outstanding work done by the WSU Psychology Clinic and the valuable resource WSU is providing to our community,” Reiner said.

Because the therapists at WSU’s Psychology Clinic are students, eventually the time comes for students to move on and discontinue their work with long-term clients.

“When you have these relationships that become long-standing,” Huprich said, “it shows that our trainees are able to connect with their clients, and that the person being helped develops trust in the relationship. This is often a very good predictor of treatment having a good outcome.”