Key Provisions of the New APA Policy

1. Redefines the term “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” in the 2006 and 2013 Council resolutions in accordance with the U.N. Convention Against Torture (rather than with the 1994 U.S. Reservations to this treaty, which were co-opted by the Bush administration to justify harsh interrogation techniques) so as to ensure that it provides protections to everyone, everywhere, including foreign detainees held outside of the U.S.;
2. Urges the U.S. government to withdraw its understandings and reservations to the U.N. Convention Against Torture in keeping with the recent recommendation of the U.N. Committee Against Torture;
3. Continues to offer APA as a supportive resource for the ethical practice of psychologists in organizational settings (including those in the military and national security roles), while recognizing that they strive to achieve and are responsible to uphold the highest levels of competence and ethics in their professional work;
4. Prohibits psychologists from participating in national security interrogations involving military and intelligence authorities, while allowing for involvement in general policy consultation regarding humane interrogations. This does not apply to domestic detention settings in which detainees are afforded all of the protections under the U.S. Constitution;
5. Clarifies that the U.N. Committee Against Torture and the U.N. Special Rapporteur Against Torture serve as the authorities for determining whether certain detention settings would fall under the purview of the 2008 petition resolution as operating in violation of international law;
6. Calls upon APA to inform federal officials of this expanded APA human rights policy, while stipulating prohibited detention settings and requesting that psychologists at these sites be offered deployment elsewhere.

Since 2006, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Psychiatric Association (ApA) have prohibited the participation of physicians and psychiatrists, respectively, from participating in national security interrogations, as well as law enforcement interrogations. The AMA has such a provision in its Code of Medical Ethics, whereas the ApA has a policy that is not included in its ethics code (however, its members are physicians). While this new Council resolution invokes Ethical Principle A to "take care to do no harm," it does not amend the Ethics Code and is not enforceable as a result. However, Council’s implementation plan for the new policy requests that the Ethics Committee consider a course of action to render the prohibition against national security interrogations enforceable under the Ethics Code. 

The net effect of this policy in relation to other APA policies, most notably the 2008 petition resolution and the 2013 reconciled policy, would be to prohibit psychologists from participating in national security interrogations, to continue to allow psychologists to provide mental health services to military personnel in all settings, and to only allow psychologists to treat military personnel (not detainees) and participate in human rights-related work in settings that operate outside of the U.S. Constitution and international law.