A program that places mental health professionals in underserved areas of Iowa will be able to continue in Story County this year with the help of a new $50,000 grant.

The Iowa Psychological Association received the grant from the Telligen Community Initiative to help fund its Psychologist Internship Training Program, which brings postdoctoral psychologists to Iowa for one year of supervised clinical work.

The grant will allow one postdoctoral psychologist to be placed in Ames under the supervision of Dr. Warren Phillips, a clinical psychologist at Central Iowa Psychological Services.

“By bringing those psychologists into Iowa and into the underserved areas, it increases the amount of services available, but we’re also able to provide services to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to receive them,” Phillips said.

Story County is designated as a Health Professional Shortage Area, and the hope of the internship program is that by bringing postdoctoral psychologists into the area, they’ll be encouraged to stay here once they’ve received their certification.

The person placed in Story County will do psychological assessments and evaluations for children, adolescents and adults, and will work with people who may be on Medicaid or have limited resources, Phillips said.

“This particular training program allows us to provide those kind of services to folks who otherwise wouldn’t be able to have them,” Phillips said.

They’ll also be able to work with parents and schools to make sure children or teenagers have “the most effective kinds of academic services and academic accommodations in place in the school setting,” said Phillips, who also teaches part time at Iowa State University.

The Iowa Psychological Foundation predicts that Iowa could see a “drain of psychology” when a large proportion of the state’s psychologists prepare to retire in the coming years, Phillips said.

“Up until now, we haven’t really been replacing them very well, so part of this program is to bring in new psychologists, additional psychologists to try to not only meet the current need, but also, hopefully in the future, balance out any changes in psychologists who might be retiring or leaving the field,” he said.

Only nine of Iowa’s 99 counties are not designated as a Health Professional Shortage Area, said Michele Greiner, training development director for IPF. HPSA is a federal designation made by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Greiner said the Ames site has been funded through state support for the past three years, but that money has “run short,” leading them to apply for the Telligen Community Initiative grant in order to continue the program.

Telligen is a West Des Moines-based nonprofit foundation that gives funding to programs focused on health quality improvement in Iowa and Illinois.

“It’s such an important program because we desperately need more psychologists in Iowa, we desperately need mental health services to try to meet the need here,” Phillips said.