Field Placement: Mental Health Association Village (MHA)
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Preceptor: Dr. David Pilon
Student Name: Yuriko Suzuki
Year: 2002

I had internship with the Mental Health Association (MHA) in Los Angeles - the Village, from June 17th to September 6th, 2002. One of the objectives of the internship was to analyze data of AB34 and AB2034 program, which is a statewide psychosocial rehabilitation program for homeless people with mental illness in California. With emerging public health concern on homeless people, I was interested in more vulnerable population, or homeless people with mental illness. This population has been underserved, although they have highly complicated problems involving psychiatry, social welfare, legal enforcement, housing, and employment, to name a few.

The Village plays major role in aggregating data from 22 counties in California, keeping track of program enrollees, and reporting its outcome to the state department of mental health on monthly basis. Although the Village has well-organized data tracking system, it has reported only basic demographic characteristics. Under the supervision of my preceptor, Dr. David Pilon, I proposed study design and converted data, and identified characteristics of enrollees of AB34 and AB2034 program. In the internship project, I identified basic characteristics of enrollees including diagnosis and level of functioning. I owed much effort especially from data management specialists at the Village to convert data for statistical analysis.

Another objective of my internship was to learn the Village's philosophy on psychosocial rehabilitation for the people with mental illness. I learned their philosophy and core value through an immersion seminar, direct service to clients, and regular attendance to the team meetings. I also had opportunity to join some of the community integration activities with clients, which deepened my understanding clients' involvement in a community.

For the first two weeks, I shadowed some of the personal service coordinators of direct service team, and visited clients home, went to grocery shopping with them, and celebrated clients birthday party, and open house for client's new independent living. Originally, I had time for direct service only two days a week, but as I spent more time with clients, I came to have more meetings with other clients and took more time to deal with client's emotional problems. Thus, I nearly spent half of my time for direct service and the other half for data analysis.

For me, it was good combination to work in a direct service team and to analyze data for AB34 and AB2034 program. Throughout my internship, I learned personalized direct services and data analysis of statewide program.

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