Clinical Psychology: Definition, Programs, & Careers​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.

Clinical psychology focuses on the science and treatment of mental health disorders. Clinical psychology serves a unique role in the world of mental health.

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There are many pathways into psychology research, just as there are many pathways into a career as a therapist. I considered many of them before ultimately embarking down the path toward becoming a clinical psychologist. Clinical psychologists operate at the intersection of the research and practice of psychology in a way that very few other professionals do. This gives them a lot of flexibility in their career choices. 

It also provides a powerful, integrated perspective on the worlds of research and treatment—which do not overlap as much as most psychologists would like.

If you are curious about the field of clinical psychology, I hope this article can help you get a firm sense of how it works: what makes clinical psychology unique in the field of psychology and the upsides and downsides that come with this status. Clinical psychology is an intense and rigorous field of study; keep in mind that there are many ways to make a real impact as a researcher or a treatment provider that do not involve going down this path. That said, if your goals align with exactly what the world of clinical psychology has to offer, I encourage you to go for it!

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What Is Clinical Psychology? (A Definition)​

Clinical psychology is the field of psychology that focuses on understanding and treating psychopathology—the entire range of unusual and unhealthy psychological patterns that we recognize as forms of mental illness (American Psychological Association, 2022). This means that clinical psychologists focus on any and all aspects of mental disorders. Some clinical psychologists specialize in conducting research to try to understand how these disorders develop, while others work on assessing people—for example, how do we know you really have anxiety versus another mental disorder? Still other clinical psychologists focus primarily on treating mental disorders, whether in group or individual therapy settings.
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Importantly, clinical psychologists are trained to conduct all of these activities as well as others, such as teaching psychology or training other psychologists. The goal of all clinical psychologists is to contribute to the improvement of mental health and increased quality of life of people around them in some way. That said, clinical psychologists do this in a huge variety of ways. Some of them never conduct research and just see clients after graduate school, while others never see a client after their training is over and instead spend all their time doing research or teaching. It is this flexibility in roles that initially drew me to the field of clinical psychology.

You can also assume, in interacting with any clinical psychologist, that they will have had fairly similar training experiences. While there is some flexibility across different training models, it is expected that all clinical psychologists will have the ability to understand psychology research and apply that knowledge in meaningful ways with clients (Shakow, 1976). For example, my graduate school mentors use their expertise in psychology research to design and implement what are called relationship education programs. In our work, we know that promoting healthy romantic relationships can reduce the severity of people’s mental disorders and help them avoid stress down the road (Braithwaite & Holt-Lunstad, 2017).

Why Is Clinical Psychology Important?​

The main reason that clinical psychology is important is that it is the only field of psychology or medicine solely focused on using both research and practice to answer the question, What are the most effective ways to treat mental illness? (Baker et al., 2008). Medical doctors such as psychiatrists and neurologists are of course involved in research and treatment of mental disorders, but they tend to focus on the brain or neurochemistry; by contrast, clinical psychologists look at a broader range of factors in developing their theories and interventions.
 
Clinical psychologists have developed many effective interventions for mental disorders, but these treatments are not used as much as they could be (Baker et al., 2008). I think this is because clinical psychologists occupy a difficult perch between the fields of treatment and research. Since clinical psychologists must demonstrate competency as both treatment providers and researchers, they may not always have deep enough experience in either domain to argue convincingly for the good treatments they have developed (Baker et al., 2008). Nonetheless, there is tremendous need for scientists to develop psychological treatments and prove that they work, and this responsibility falls chiefly on clinical psychologists.

Clinical Psychology History

Clinical psychology as a field began with psychologists working in mental asylums around the late 1800s, and the first standalone clinic opened in Philadelphia in 1986 (Benjamin Jr., 2005). Around this time, psychologists began opening clinics that were focused solely on mental disorders rather than working in hospitals where patients had many different needs.

Within these spaces, they began to develop a science of assessment, as they wanted to bring a rigorous scientific approach to categorizing people according to their mental abilities and challenges. While this initially took the form of intelligence tests, it eventually branched outward to include the effective measurement of psychopathology, too. It is from the field of clinical psychology that standardized testing for academic and occupational potential originates. This discipline within psychology is also called psychometrics, or the study of how we can best measure psychological concepts such as depression, intelligence, or obsessive thinking (Watson, 1953).

Clinical psychologists brought this focus on assessment to the job of supporting the US military in World War II. While they were tasked with evaluating soldiers for duty, they also became focused on supporting the soldiers through the trials of war. After the war was over, clinical psychologists began to focus more and more on the provision of therapy, something they had previously left more to psychiatrists in the tradition of Sigmund Freud and other early proponents of therapy. They had realized during the war that their broad knowledge of how mental health challenges developed and looked different from one person to the next could be used not just to understand people but to treat them (Watson, 1953).
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In the ensuing decades, clinical psychologists spent a lot of time trying to decide just what their role was supposed to be and how people should be trained to perform it. Were they researchers, assessors, therapists, or some combination of all three? By the 1970s, there were two primary approaches to training and work in clinical psychology. One approach sees clinical psychologists as “clinical scientists,” or people who are scientists first and therapy providers second, while the other approach sees clinical psychologists as “practitioner-scholars,” or people who focus on using scholarly research to guide their work as treatment providers (Humphreys et al., 2018). People trained from the first perspective are usually enrolled in PhD programs in clinical psychology, while people trained from the second perspective are usually studying in doctorate of psychology, or PsyD, programs.

Examples of Clinical Psychology Research

Most clinical psychologists conduct research regarding how mental disorders develop, how we can treat them, or some combination of the two (Kazdin, 2011). In this regard, clinical psychology is the field of psychology most interested in testing and establishing effective interventions.
 
For example, a clinical psychologist may spend their entire career focused on a particular “presenting concern,” such as when children come to psychologists needing help with their aggressive or antisocial behavior (Kazdin, 2011). To provide the best treatment possible, such a clinical psychologist would want to have a theory of how aggressive or antisocial behaviors develop in children and why they are maintained, then develop a treatment approach whose “mechanisms of change”—such as reinforcing positive or more desirable behavior in children—they can demonstrate to be effective. This in fact is exactly what people such as Alan Kazdin have done (Kazdin, 2011).

Clinical Psychology Degrees

As I noted above, there are two kinds of clinical psychology degrees at this time: the PhD and the PsyD. Although their graduates overlap substantially in their abilities to perform each of the responsibilities one might expect of a clinical psychologist, their training programs have emphasized different aspects of the role. For example, training programs that are more research-focused tend to have more faculty members who use a cognitive-behavioral orientation to research and therapy (Norcross et al., 2010). This makes sense, as cognitive-behavioral interventions are the type that have been most rigorously studied by researchers.

​1. Clinical Psychology Master’s Programs

At this time, clinical psychology training takes place at the doctoral level. Prior to the field establishing itself clearly in terms of both research and treatment, there were some clinical psychology master’s programs, but at present there are few or none (Washburn, 2022). This is because licensure as a psychologist who provides therapy and assessment requires a doctoral degree in every state across the country.

2. Clinical Psychology PhD Programs

Clinical psychology PhD programs place a strong emphasis on research experience. Students in these programs are more likely to receive funding to attend school, often from research grants awarded to their faculty. Since there is a strong focus on academic achievement in research skills in these programs, they are the most difficult to enter and have the lowest acceptance rates (Norcross et al., 2010).

3. Clinical Psychology PsyD Programs

Clinical psychologists trained in PsyD programs spend more of their time learning to provide assessment and therapy, and less time doing research, than do PhD students. These programs are not as difficult to gain entry into and take less time to complete than PhD programs, but students typically do not get the same kind of financial support that PhD students get. On the other hand, PsyD students are more likely to receive specialized training in certain subfields of clinical psychology (Perry & Boccaccini, 2009).

If you are curious about what it takes to get into a PhD program in clinical psychology, I recommend watching this video:

Video: Getting into a Clinical Psychology Ph.D. Program​

Clinical Psychology Job Description & Careers

So what do clinical psychologists do with all this training? Some end up training other clinical psychologists as faculty members in the kind of program they attended; these psychologists often end up seeing few clients and focusing primarily on research and teaching (Himelein & Putnam, 2001). Most clinical psychologists, however, spend much of their time seeing clients; my guess would be that well over half of clinical psychologists are primarily clinicians. They serve in this role in a variety of places, but they may be more likely than other therapists (such as social workers or licensed counselors) to work in hospitals and with veterans and members of the military. That said, plenty of clinical psychologists are working in private practice, too.​

Clinical Psychology Internship

A distinguishing feature of the training of all clinical psychologists is that, in order to get licensed, they must complete a one-year internship at the end of their student training (American Psychological Association, 2015). This is a full-time position, usually focused primarily on therapy and assessment services, and it usually takes place in a hospital or outpatient clinic. After this training step is complete, clinical psychologists are usually fully licensed and able to operate independently.​

Clinical Psychology Journals

Clinical psychologists publish their work in hundreds of different scientific journals. However, the most highly regarded journals in the field of clinical psychology are, according to a recent study, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Psychological Medicine, Clinical Psychological Science, Depression and Anxiety, and Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (Adams & Miller, 2022). The two focuses of clinical psychology—doing research and providing therapy—seem to be reflected well in these journal names, don’t they?​

Clinical Psychology Topics

Clinical psychologists study a wide range of topics, but some of the most common are theory and treatment, the process of psychotherapy, and the nature and treatment of disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidality, and substance abuse (Liu et al., 2021). Reflecting a focus on research methods as well, many articles are written to determine whether results regarding the same topic are consistent across research studies (Tackett & Miller, 2019), particularly for treatment of mental disorders.​

Articles Related to Clinical Psychology

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

• Social Psychology: Definition, Theory, & Examples
• Positive Psychology: Definition, Theories, and Examples
• Gestalt: Psychology, Principles, & Therapy
  
• Psychologists: Definition, History, & Types​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Books Related to Clinical Psychology

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

• Cognitive Therapy of Depression (The Guilford Clinical Psychology and Psychopathology Series)
• Clinical Psychology in the Mental Health Inpatient Setting: International Perspectives
• Clinical Psychology (PSY 334 Introduction to Clinical Psychology)

Final Thoughts on Clinical Psychology​

I think clinical psychologists do amazing and important work, and they continue to struggle to find a balance between creating scientific research and applying scientific research (Beutler et al., 1995). There is no simple solution to this problem; it may just be the nature of the field. Despite this friction, clinical psychologists are responsible for many of the powerful treatments that manage or cure mental disorders across the world today. If you find the idea of contributing as both a researcher and a treatment provider appealing, this just might be the field for you.

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References

• Adams, L. M., & Miller, A. B. (2022). Mechanisms of mental-health disparities among minoritized groups: How well are the top journals in clinical psychology representing this work? Clinical Psychological Science, 10(3), 387–416.
• American Psychological Association. (2015, February). Standards of accreditation for health service psychology. http://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation/about/policies/standards-of-accreditation.pdf
• American Psychological Association. (2022, September). Clinical psychology. https://www.apa.org/ed/graduate/specialize/clinical
• Baker, T. B., McFall, R. M., & Shoham, V. (2008). Current status and future prospects of clinical psychology: Toward a scientifically principled approach to mental and behavioral health care. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(2), 67–103.
• Benjamin Jr, L. T. (2005). A history of clinical psychology as a profession in America (and a glimpse at its future). Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 1–30.
• Beutler, L. E., Williams, R. E., Wakefield, P. J., & Entwistle, S. R. (1995). Bridging scientist and practitioner perspectives in clinical psychology. American Psychologist, 50(12), 984–994.
• Braithwaite, S., & Holt-Lunstad, J. (2017). Romantic relationships and mental health. Current Opinion in Psychology, 13, 120–125.
• Himelein, M. J., & Putnam, E. A. (2001). Work activities of academic clinical psychologists: Do they practice what they teach? Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 32(5), 537–542.
• Humphreys, L., Crino, R., & Wilson, I. (2018). The competencies movement: Origins, limitations, and future directions. Clinical Psychologist, 22(3), 290–299.
• Kazdin, A. E. (2011). Evidence-based treatment research: Advances, limitations, and next steps. American Psychologist, 66(8), 685–698.
• Liu, S., Zhang, R. Y., & Kishimoto, T. (2021). Analysis and prospect of clinical psychology based on topic models: hot research topics and scientific trends in the latest decades. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 26(4), 395–407.
• Norcross, J. C., Ellis, J. L., & Sayette, M. A. (2010). Getting in and getting money: A comparative analysis of admission standards, acceptance rates, and financial assistance across the research–practice continuum in clinical psychology programs. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 4(2), 99–104.
• Perry, K. M., & Boccaccini, M. T. (2009). Specialized training in APA-accredited clinical psychology doctoral programs: Findings from a review of program websites. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 16(3), 348–359.
• Shakow, D. (1976). What is clinical psychology? American Psychologist, 31(8), 553–560.
• Tackett, J. L., & Miller, J. D. (2019). Introduction to the special section on increasing replicability, transparency, and openness in clinical psychology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 128(6), 487–492.
• Washburn, J. J. (2022). Master's Level Education and Training in Clinical Psychology: Preparing for Professional Practice. In G. J. G. Asmundson (Ed.), Comprehensive Clinical Psychology, Second Edition (pp. 46–54). Elsevier.
• Watson, R. I. (1953). A brief history of clinical psychology. Psychological Bulletin, 50(5), 321–346.

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