Mental Health Clinical Pastoral Education Program
McLean’s Mental Health Clinical Pastoral Education Program offers interfaith professional education for students who provide mental health chaplaincy services.
In mental health clinical pastoral education (CPE), theological students and spiritual leaders of all faiths—pastors, priests, rabbis, imams, and others—have supervised encounters with persons struggling with mental health issues.
In McLean’s Mental Health Clinical Pastoral Education Program, students learn to:
- Assess how spirituality and severe psychiatric illness overlap
- Provide outcome-oriented spiritual care to individuals and groups
- Engage existential questions about the human mind and soul
- Work closely with experienced mental health providers
- Refine personal meaning and spiritual-orienting systems
- Learn about evidence-based practices related to spirituality and mental health
CPE students at McLean gain experience in acute inpatient and/or residential psychiatric treatment programs that specialize in:
- Acute detoxification and substance use
- Dissociative disorders and trauma
- Short-term crisis intervention, depression, anxiety, and community Integration
- Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder
- General adult mental health
- Community integration and psychosis
- Geriatric psychiatry
- Diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitative care for adults with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or persistent psychiatric illness
- Young women’s eating disorders
The McLean Mental Health CPE program is a part of the Spirituality and Mental Health Program at McLean Hospital.
The McLean CPE program is provisionally accredited by the ACPE, the Standard for Spiritual Care and Education. ACPE is the only agency recognized by the United States Department of Education (USDE) to accredit programs of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) in the United States. Learn more about ACPE.
Integrating Spirituality and Psychotherapy
Read more about how McLean staff are finding common ground between mental health and spirituality to help support patients.
Fall/Winter Mental Health CPE
This track runs from the day after Labor Day to the second week of May.
Interested persons must have experience in spiritual/religious leadership and need to have basic listening and caregiving skills, as well as excellent self-awareness. Candidates who have already completed a unit of CPE or can demonstrate an understanding of the CPE educational process are preferred.
The program includes biweekly educational days, biweekly supervisory consultation sessions, nine weekly clinical hours on two weekdays, and a rotation in group leadership on Sunday afternoons.
Students participate in a hospital-wide orientation and two full CPE orientation days in the first week of the program.
Tuition is $1000 with no application fee.
Summer Mental Health CPE
This track, designed for theological students, seminarians, future health care chaplains, and clergy, runs from the day after Memorial Day to the end of the second week of August.
Interested persons must have some professional experience, good listening and caregiving skills, as well as excellent self-awareness. Candidates who have completed a unit of CPE or can demonstrate an understanding of the CPE educational process are preferred.
The program includes two afternoons of educational session per week, weekly supervisory consultations, 20-25 hours weekly clinical hours from Monday to Friday, as well as participation in a rotation in group leadership on Sunday afternoons.
Students participate in a hospital-wide orientation as well as in a CPE orientation in the first week of the program.
Tuition is $1000 with no application fee.
How To Apply
Those interested in applying may email Rev. Angelika A. Zollfrank, MDiv, BCC, ACPE, or call 617.855.2520 to request an application packet.
Applications for the summer program are accepted starting in November of the previous year. Applications for the fall program are accepted beginning in March of the same year.
