Valuing Connection and Collaboration at 3-C Family Services with Vanessa Hsieh

Hi! My name is Vanessa Hsieh, and I am a senior from Long Island, New York majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Business Administration and Chemistry. For the Fall 2026 semester, I am interning at 3-C Family Services, which is a private practice that utilizes research-based clinical practices, such as psychiatry, psychology, and therapeutic techniques, to provide mental health support to children, adolescents, and adults.

My interest in the brain and its behavioral outcomes stemmed in my youth. I always enjoyed analyzing how people think and act in reaction to specific stimuli or situations. In high school, I engaged in college courses in neuroscience and psychology, immersed myself in behavioral economics books, and conducted an independent research project on the Big Five personality traits and dream characteristics, which allowed me to present and win at my district’s research symposium. I also spent my time tutoring younger children on difficult school subjects, which gave me the opportunity to help and connect with youth.

In college, I furthered my passion for helping the pediatric population. I currently work as a Medical Assistant at WakeMed Pediatric Endocrinology, where I assist with rooming patients and engage with children in their treatment. Developing close bonds with chronic diabetic patients during their visits has given me invaluable experience and compassion for struggling youth. Working alongside physicians enabled me to develop foundations on various endocrine disorders and understand how clinicians develop a treatment plan tailored to each unique patient. This experience helped solidify my passion for medicine. Additionally, seeing how kids of different ages and backgrounds struggle with their mental health in similar ways contributed to my interest in adolescent psychiatry.

Working as a research assistant in the CASCADE lab under Dr. Cope Feurer has allowed me to learn about the neurophysiological side of mental health disorders in youth and the role that life stress plays in the development of adolescent depression and anxiety. Currently, I am developing an honors thesis on the relationship between specific event-related brain wave potential (late positive potential) and depression symptoms in adolescent females. I hope my contribution to this field of research can help expand the literature of depression risk factors in children.

These experiences led me to pursue the Karen M. Gil Internship as a clinical psychology intern at 3-C Family Services with my wonderful advisor, Dr. Lori Schweickert. At 3-C, I am able to scribe and shadow psychiatric evaluations, medication management plans, therapy sessions, and educational classes. As a scribe, I’m working towards improving my clinical documentation skills in order to produce a concise, yet detailed enough “History of Present Illness” description of patient background. I have learned the difficulty of deciding what to include in clinical notes versus omit, which is a current controversial issue in the psychiatry field. When I shadow group therapy or social skills sessions, I am able to observe the layout and see how clinicians interact with patients. The patients that 3-C sees vary in age and conditions, and I am able to learn so much about autism, ADHD, social anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other disorders, just from talking with the clinicians one-on-one. These are constant learning opportunities that I am incredibly grateful for.

Every Wednesday, a case conference is held, where all clinicians come together and discuss key administrative tasks, individual questions and stories, and broad psychiatric topics to gauge opinions on. After only attending a few, I can say that this has been my favorite part of my internship so far. Watching how different clinicians, who specialize in different realms of mental health, work together and share their own opinions on challenging topics has been a wonder to see. After working at a large hospital system, I noticed the dramatic differences between a big healthcare institution and a much smaller, private-practice. The environment at 3-C fosters intimacy and encourages collaboration and openness, which is something I truly admire.

I have the amazing opportunity to assist Dr. Padro, a clinical psychologist, with developing guides for her social skills group classes, which are tailored towards neurodivergent high schoolers who need assistance with peer socialization. I am also in the process of updating the vast resources spreadsheet that 3-C uses for referrals, educational services, and parental resources. Additionally, I am compiling a literature review on youth screening measures for sibling aggression and sibling to parent aggression.

Overall, I am extremely grateful for this experience and what I have learned thus far. I would like to extend my appreciation to Dr. Schweickert for serving as my mentor, and my deepest gratitude for Dr. Steven Buzinski and Mr. Richie Gray for their support. I’m looking forward to the rest of the semester and seeing what other great things will come!