Leadership Team Announced for Psychology Internship Program

October 5, 2021

McLean Hospital is thrilled to announce that Courtney Beard, PhD, Thröstur Björgvinsson, PhD, ABPP, and Matthew Schrock, PhD, have joined the new co-director leadership team for the McLean Hospital Psychology Internship Program.

This team was recently appointed after longtime director of the psychology internship, Philip G. Levendusky, PhD, ABPP, announced his plans to retire next year. Levendusky served as the program’s director since 1996 and was joined by Björgvinsson as co-director in 2009.

“During his tenure, Dr. Levendusky has provided the educational leadership for McLean’s nationally recognized pre-doctoral internship and has mentored dozens of trainees,” said Shelly F. Greenfield, MD, MPH, chief academic officer for McLean Hospital.

“We greatly appreciate and thank Dr. Levendusky for all that he has accomplished on behalf of the McLean Hospital Psychology Internship Program and his leadership and mentoring of several generations of clinical psychologists. For many years, this pre-doctoral program has advanced McLean’s mission of training the next generation of clinical psychologists.”

Shaping the Future of Psychology

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McLean Hospital is home to some of the world’s foremost psychology training programs. Learn more about our APA- approved pre-doctoral internship and other opportunities.

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About the Leadership Team

Beard is director of the Cognition and Affect Research and Education (CARE) Laboratory, co-director of research at the Behavioral Health Partial Hospital Program, and an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Beard’s research focuses on delineating transdiagnostic cognitive and affective mechanisms underlying emotional disorders, translating these findings into innovative treatments, and implementing these treatments in real-world settings. She provides research and career mentorship to many trainees, ranging from undergraduates to psychology interns to junior faculty.

Björgvinsson is director of the Behavioral Health Partial Hospital Program at McLean Hospital and an associate professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at HMS. He has served as co-director of the McLean Hospital/HMS pre-doctoral clinical psychology internship since 2009. He is also a 1997 graduate of the program. Björgvinsson has developed a national and international reputation as a clinical innovator, particularly in the implementation of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for the treatment of severe anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorders. His research interests focus on treatment outcomes and establishing the effectiveness of CBT for a wide range of psychiatric disorders within a partial hospital program.

Schrock earned his MA and PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Louisville, and he completed his pre-doctoral internship and post-doctoral fellowship at McLean and HMS. He works as a senior staff psychologist at the McLean’s Behavioral Health Partial Hospital Program, where he focuses on the delivery of empirically supported treatments for anxiety, mood, and personality disorders. Schrock is an instructor in psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at HMS, where he is involved in the supervision and training of students and early career psychologists. Schrock has been serving as the associate director of training for the McLean Hospital/HMS Doctoral Internship in Clinical Psychology and was a 2012 graduate of the program.

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