History of the Reiss-Davis Graduate
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Reiss-Davis was originally founded to promote the mental health and well-being of children of the Los Angeles community, by offering clinical services to children and families and mental health training to students and professionals who desire to serve that same mission.
Reiss-Davis continues to fulfill that mission by having clinicians and Fellows provide diagnostic and therapeutic work through the two year Postdoctoral/Post-graduate Fellowship Program at the Vista Del Mar’s Outpatient Counseling Center; psychodiagnostic services (PEDS) to assess learning disabilities, emotional dysfunctions and/or autism through the PEDS Fellowship Program; continuing education opportunities for professionals in the field of mental health through the Saturdays at the Center Program. Developing the graduate education program enacts the School's mission to provide a quality, Psychodynamic, Neurobiologic and Trauma - informed (PNT) doctoral program in Psychodynamic Child Psychology and Psychotherapy that prepares clinicians to address the mental health needs of children, adolescents and their families in a culturally competent manner via the Doctoral Weekend Program for those professionals who already are clinically licensed in the state of California or license-eligible, but want to delve deeply into psychodynamically informed child and adolescent psychological issues; and conduct research toward achieving their dissertation.
Reiss-Davis continues to fulfill that mission by having clinicians and Fellows provide diagnostic and therapeutic work through the two year Postdoctoral/Post-graduate Fellowship Program at the Vista Del Mar’s Outpatient Counseling Center; psychodiagnostic services (PEDS) to assess learning disabilities, emotional dysfunctions and/or autism through the PEDS Fellowship Program; continuing education opportunities for professionals in the field of mental health through the Saturdays at the Center Program. Developing the graduate education program enacts the School's mission to provide a quality, Psychodynamic, Neurobiologic and Trauma - informed (PNT) doctoral program in Psychodynamic Child Psychology and Psychotherapy that prepares clinicians to address the mental health needs of children, adolescents and their families in a culturally competent manner via the Doctoral Weekend Program for those professionals who already are clinically licensed in the state of California or license-eligible, but want to delve deeply into psychodynamically informed child and adolescent psychological issues; and conduct research toward achieving their dissertation.
The Reiss-Davis legacy
Dr. Oscar Reiss was a very preeminent pediatrician not only in Los Angeles but across the country, holding many professional positions in his field of pediatrics. He taught and supervised at USC, held the position of Chief Medical Doctor at Vista Del Mar, and had a thriving practice in Beverly Hills. Throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s he had a dream to develop a clinic or center that would offer the same high quality diagnostic and therapeutic services that children and adolescents in Beverly Hills were receiving to young people whose families could not otherwise afford such mental health services. He also wanted a center that offered advanced training to psychology, psychiatry, and clinical social work professionals who wanted to work diagnostically and therapeutically with the mental health needs of children and adolescents. And he wanted to offer all of this within a psychodynamic orientation.
Though Dr. Reiss was very much ahead of his time, he persisted in pursuing his dream, amassing many other like-minded professionals along the way, but was never able to see his dream come to fruition, as he died shortly before the opening of the Oscar Reiss Mental Hygiene Clinic September 21,1950 on Fairfax Boulevard in Los Angeles. One of his pediatric colleagues, Dr. David Bennett Davis, wanting to continue Dr. Reiss’s dream, became the first board president of the clinic, but unexpectedly died one year later. The board of the clinic decided to change the name of Dr. Reiss’s clinic to the Reiss-Davis Clinic shortly thereafter. But it was not until 1963, with the growth of Reiss-Davis in size and services that it moved to 9760 West Pico Boulevard and became the nationally and internationally known and well-respected Reiss-Davis Child Study Center.
Becoming Part of Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services
Reiss-Davis joined Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services in 1978, and started providing post-graduate fellowship training and clinical services to children. There it expanded to provide Psycho-Educational Diagnostic Testing and fellowship training on the campus in West Los Angeles, at the address it currently holds.