Lindsey Lagerstrom: Student from Presque Isle named inaugural Glickman Fellow in Clinical Psychology

University of Maine graduate student and alumna Lindsey Lagerstrom of Presque Isle, Maine, has been named the inaugural Glickman Fellow in Clinical Psychology at UMaine.

Lagerstrom worked in outpatient mental health and substance abuse in Aroostook County while earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology at UMaine. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in neuropsychology this fall.

The Glickman Fellowship in Clinical Psychology was made possible by a major gift from the Albert B. Glickman Family Foundation, with additional support from the UMaine Graduate School. It was developed in recognition of the fact that the health and well-being of residents in Maine depends on the availability of trained mental health providers, and is designed to help meet the increasing demand for high quality mental health providers in Maine by recruiting and funding students specifically from Maine. The fellowship fully funds one doctoral student from Maine per year for the next five years.

According to the U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration, multiple counties in Maine are federally designated as having mental health provider shortages. 

“Because best practice recommendations for increasing access to health care in rural areas suggest recruiting students with a rural background, the Glickman Fellowship was set up specifically to recruit students from Maine and provide them with training to ensure they will be leaders in mental health,” says Emily Haigh, associate professor and director of clinical training in the UMaine Department of Psychology.

As part of the program, the Glickman Fellow will be exposed to generalist training curricula, conduct mentored research, and receive supervision and training in evidence-based practice. In addition, there will be opportunities for a variety of rural community training experiences at UMaine’s on-campus clinic and at external sites statewide, such as forensic assessments (Department of Corrections), behavioral health interventions in primary care settings (Maine General Hospital), school assessments (RSU 63), neuropsychological assessments (Acadia and Northern Light Medical Center), and assessment and intervention for inpatients (Riverview Psychiatric Hospital).

While the overarching goal is to increase the number of high quality providers by targeting students from Maine, the Glickman Fellowship is also designed to increase access to evidence-based mental health in Maine by allowing the fellow to dedicate double the number of clinical hours in the community, including training other mental health providers in empirically-supported treatments.

Lagerstrom says that her interest in psychology emerged in high school, when she became interested in understanding the human mind. Her mother and grandfather, who were clinical social workers, instilled in her “a passion for helping and healing.”

Her undergraduate research received the competitive UMaine Center for Undergraduate Research Fellowship award. For her senior research project, she conducted a survey about telehealth practices among mental health professionals in Maine, a source of helpful information about the availability of these services in the state. 

Fayeza Ahmed, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology who worked closely with Lagerstrom for four years, describes her as dedicated and hard working, with an aptitude for critical thinking. In the Ahmed lab, Lagerstrom was involved in recruitment, data entry, data analysis, lab management and training of new undergraduate research assistants. 

“While working in the field, the gap in mental health care services, specifically psychological assessment, in my home community became more apparent to me,” Lagerstrom says. “As both of my parents have strong roots in Aroostook County, and being raised there myself, one of my long-standing career goals is to return to Presque Isle to address a disparity in psychological care through the insight of neuropsychological assessment.”

Contact: Brian Jansen, brian.jansen@maine.edu