Interning with NAMI Southern Nevada as their Family Programs intern was an overall amazing experience. The internship itself has benefitted my future career of becoming a marriage and family therapist by allowing me to become more familiar with how to handle cultural diversity, how to successfully communicate with people that have different mental illnesses, and empathize with those who were suffering from mental illness or other issues, whether it was the individual themselves, or family members/friends who had a loved one that was suffering. This internship will continue to benefit my future career as I will take all that I have learned and apply it to my practice of therapy in order to create a welcoming environment for my patients to feel comfortable and themselves in.
My internship did tie into my major of study, which is psychology with a minor in family studies, as I got to experience in person interactions between individuals who had mental illnesses, and myself, tying into the psychology aspect of things and gain better understanding as to why people behave the way that they do. As for my family studies minor, I was able to tie family members experiences with loved ones who suffer, or wished for more connection with each other, to topics I have learned from my minor such as understanding familial relationships, how they may fall apart due to one individual or the other, and understand why it is family is so important to those who need help or are suffering alone. I believe the educational requirements needed beforehand to be successful in this internship are that of basic psychological concepts, and understanding the topic of familial relationships and their interactions. Basic psychological concepts are needed in order to gain a better grasp of behaviors exhibited by people at the internship site, that way the intern feels more comfortable in interacting with those who suffer from these mental health issues instead of being scared of something they don't understand. Understanding the topic of familial relationships and interactions would also allow the intern to view both sides of individual and family opinions on the matters or issues they are having with each other.
Personally, I am not interested in the career of family support groups as I worked with my internship with, for a variety of reasons. Some of which include that I want to become a therapist and be able to actively assist individuals in finding solutions or remedies to their struggles, or even work with them to bring their family members back together. These aspects are things that a family support group does not allow, as it is more of a "guiding" reflection with a variety of families in the room, with no aspect of advice or 1 on 1 interactions to assist the families and their needs. However, if I chose to pursue a career similar to my internship, the training, education, skills, and experiences I would need to gain are more than those I have already stated. For example, from my experience interning with NAMI, it is preferred you have personal experience with mental health struggles in order to secure a full-time position here, something that I do not have. Additionally, I would need more training in how to handle certain mental health situations, which is also something I am currently unfamiliar with.
One piece of advice I have for incoming interns is to ask your supervisors during the inetrview process what your position will entail. Such as what will you be doing on a day to day basis, what is expected of you over the course of your internship, and if there is any additional training or classes you will be required to take. Unfortunately, after beginning my internship, I was hit with a multitude of expectations, classes, and trainings I was unaware of during my interview process, which made the internship more stressful for me than it should have been, and asked of a larger time commitment from me than I expected as I was not made aware beforehand. Overall, the internship was a great experience and extremely doable once I got into the routine of things, but I did not appreciate being surprised with tasks, classes, and trainings I was unaware of to begin with asking more of me than I thought I was gpoing to give in the beginning.
