Someone to Listen
For fifty-seven years, the skilled and caring professionals at UT Psychological Clinic have been helping people who walk through their doors.
Last summer the UT Psychological Clinic moved off campus to a space that is now easier to access for clients seeking their services. Operating from an office suite in the UT Conference Center’s first floor allows the clinic to see more clients and be more accessible to the general public. Public transportation is available to and from the Conference Center and public parking is just across the street.
The clinic offers psychological assessment, psycho-educational evaluations, adult psychotherapy, child and adolescent psychotherapy, group therapy, marital and couples therapy, family psychotherapy, child custody and parenting fitness evaluations, and other types of specialized diagnostic and psychotherapeutic interventions. Although the Clinic is available to UT students, 80 percent of its clients are from the general public.
“The clinic is staffed by approximately thirty very bright doctoral students who are interested and passionate about what they are doing,” said Lance T. Laurence , director of the clinic and associate professor in the Department of Psychology.
The UT Psychological Clinic is the primary training site for students in the clinical psychology doctoral program.
The students spend about twenty hours a week working in the clinic during their second through fifth years of study. They are supervised by ten full-time clinical faculty members and a dozen part-time adjunct staff.
In addition to improving the accessibility of the clinic’s services to clients in the community, enabling more clients to be served, the enhancement and upgrading of the clinic facilities also provide both a more suitable environment for serving clients and better facilities for training the graduate students in the clinical program.
“We want the public to know that we’re here and providing quality care at an affordable price,” Laurence said, adding that the clinic combines the university’s mission of teaching, research, and public service.
Clients pay $40 for the first meeting. Fees can be adjusted to patients’ ability to pay and flexible payment plans can be arranged. The clinic accepts cash and checks; credit and insurance aren’t accepted at this time.
Clients get the benefit of having their care provided by a team of experts—a doctoral student and multiple faculty members. Students’ sessions with clients are videotaped so supervising faculty can closely review them with students and oversee treatment options. Because the clinic is part of the university, a variety of clinical research studies occur at the clinic at any given time. The clinic also has one of the most comprehensive collections of diagnostic tools in the state.
UT’s Psychological Clinic opened in the early 1950s on Thirteenth Street and Cumberland Avenue. In the early 1990s it moved to the Austin Peay Building on the Hill, where it operated for more than two decades. As the clinic began to provide services beyond the university community, the need for parking and better access to care prompted its move to its new location in Suite 208 of the UT Conference Center. The newly renovated location provides easy access, ample parking nearby, and a comfortable atmosphere for conducting confidential interventions with clients.
For more information about the UT Psychological Clinic, see psychclinic.utk.edu.
