Learning Outcomes and Career Outcomes

Graduates with a specialization in Integrative Mental Health (IMH) will be prepared for careers as integrative mental health practitioners, able to provide clinical treatment within the scope of their license, augmented by the use of a variety of complementary and integrative medicine interventions. Their PhD program provides them with marketable skills in demand by health consumers, and promoted by many accrediting bodies.

Consumers today are demanding alternatives to mainstream biomedical psychiatric and mental health care. Pharmacotherapies are often a necessary component of treatment, yet many persons suffer adverse medication effects, or a failure of medication to produce sufficient relief from mental and emotional disorders. Long term many patients do not adhere to medication therapies. The addition of evidence-based behavioral, nutritional, and spiritual/transpersonal interventions can supplement and sometimes replace medication regimens for individuals with acute and chronic mental health disorders.

Many hospitals and clinics are now marketing “integrative care” for mental health disorders, yet there are few graduates of accredited University programs trained in the wide array of complementary and integrative therapies.
Students enrolled in the IMH specialization can earn nationally recognized certificates in clinical hypnosis, biofeedback, and health and wellness coaching, further adding to their toolbox of evidence-based skills in demand in health care today. They also can acquire the knowledge and skills for work in chronic pain, palliative care, and integrative hospice services, areas where integrative approaches have been demonstrated to be clinically effective.