Psychology

​Thomas B. Finan Center's Psychology Department is currently comprised of five members. A Clinical Service Director, who, in addition to providing patient evaluation and treatment services, performs a variety of administrative, coordination and community liaison functions for the Center. A Psychology staff member is assigned to each of the Center'​s four treatment/service teams. Rather than primarily focusing on assignment to cottages, the service mobilizes flexible resources as needed to meet current need.

Each staff psychologist is charged with coordinating services for a particular clinical service area: 1) Admissions and treatments on the adult admission cottages, 2) the assisted living unit; 3) forensic evaluation, and 4) chronic care unit. In addition to their primary coordination assignment, each psychologist provides back-up services to other service areas as workload demands and allows.

Primary patient care services provided by the Psychology Department include, psychological assessment and psychotherapy. In addition to providing intellectual, personality and functional evaluations, the Psychology Department also bears major responsibility for inpatient and outpatient forensic evaluations of competency to stand trial, dangerousness and/or criminal responsibility. The Psychology Department provides many of the psychotherapeutic services conducted at the Center.

In addition to direct patient care services, the Psychology staff also accomplish numerous indirect patient care services, provide professional training for staff and students, and engage in performance improvement activities. Psychologists assist in operation of cottage milieus through consultation in the design and evaluation of behavioral intervention programs. Almost all research activity at the Center is designed and/or accomplished by or in consultation with Psychology staff members, who also provide clinical training and supervision for Bachelor, Masters and Doctoral level psychology students from several institutions.

Provided by five experienced doctoral level psychologists, all licensed by the State of Maryland. Four psychologists are members of the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology. Specialty areas include:

  • Individual and Group Counseling for Adults
  • Forensic Evaluations
  • Neuropsychological Evaluations
  • Personality and Intelligence Testing
  • Trauma Recovery Issues​
  • Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment​