My goal is to capitalize on the opportunity (at first
contact with the juvenile courts) to deliver an
evidence-based intervention to a very high-risk popu-
lation, thereby reducing the development of juvenile
substance use disorders, HIV/STD infection, and recidi-
vism. Given my role as director of a juvenile court clinic,
I am also collaborating with colleagues to develop
some treatment interventions. We are currently testing
an integrated mental health, substance use, and HIV
prevention interventions for juvenile offenders with
identified mental health concerns.
What are the future trends you see for clinical
psychology?
I think the future trends for clinical psychology include
innovation and creativity when it comes to career
options and fundable research ideas. Clinical psycholo-
gists must be flexible and adaptive when it comes to
career options and realize that their clinical and/or
research skill set can be used in multiple different
domains. In the forensic realm, clinical psychologists
are being used more and more at the policy level,
which is something that is typically not“taught”at the
graduate level. However, the basic clinical consultation
skills that graduate students gain through their clinical
experiences can easily be applied here and provide an
interesting and novel career option. Additionally, as
the status of domestic and global economies wax and
wane, in order to gain federal funding, research ideas
must include significant populations, innovative
research questions, and novel approaches to testing
these research questions. Clinical psychologists will
likely need to submit grants to a myriad of funding
agencies, which requires learning about how those
grants are written perhaps differently from other
agencies. Grant funding will likely become more com-
petitive and thus clinical psychologists in academic
medical settings will likely see that they need to diver-
sify their career portfolio to include multiple different
ways of satisfying their intellectual interests and earn-
ing their salaries.
Why should students consider a career in forensic
psychology?
I think forensic psychology is a rapidly growing area for
clinical psychologists, particularly for those with a
strong clinical research background. Clinical
psychologists must get training in forensic psychology
(as forensic assessments differ greatly from standard
clinical assessments, for instance). But forensic training
combined with a strong clinical research background
can really help inform the development of forensic
assessment measures as well as the development of
evidence-based mental health and health promotion
interventions (e.g., substance use, HIV prevention) for
criminally involved individuals. Such forensic psycholo-
gists would be at the“cutting edge”of research and
would be contributing to a nascent area of literature.
In addition, a forensic psychologist has many dif-
ferent career options (none of which are mutually
exclusive). Options include providing forensic assess-
ment for court-referred individuals; providing consul-
tation services (e.g., to attorneys, judges, police
departments); teaching at the undergraduate, gradu-
ate, and/or postdoctoral levels; developing pre- and
postdoctoral forensic clinical training programs (espe-
cially with an emphasis on research); designing and
conducting research trials for assessment and inter-
vention; administrative work (e.g., role as clinical
director for a court clinic, directing a child advocacy
center); and/or doing policy work (e.g., related to
forensic mental health statutes or laws) at local,
national, and/or international levels.Marina Tolou-ShamsDr. Marina Tolou-ShamsFORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY 555