DeLeon elected APA president for 2000

His agenda calls for implementing others 'good ideas.'

By Sara Martin
Monitor staff

Patrick H. DeLeon, PhD, a key adviser for Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), has been elected the first APA president of the new millennium.

DeLeon ran for office against four other psychologists: Ludy T. Benjamin, professor at Texas A&M Alice F. Chang, scientist-practitioner from Tucson, Ariz.; Lynn Rehm, professor at the University of Houston; and Nathan Stockhamer, a practitioner in New York City. The association's Election Committee certified his win on Dec. 1.

DeLeon, who will take office Jan. 1, 2000, promises no big surprises as president.

'My agenda will be consistent with what I've already done, biased by my experiences in life.'

As the son of two attorneys and a lawyer himself, for example, he seeks closer relationships between psychology and law, which could lead to more career opportunities for psychologists in forensics. As the Senate administrative assistant for one of the nation's most rural states, he is an advocate for improving mental health care in underserved areas.

And, as a stickler for expanding psychology's reach, he says he will continue to push for prescription privileges for psychologists, a cause he has high hopes for.

'We are professionals and we have to make it happen,' he says. 'We can't wait for someone to give it to us.'

A public service career

DeLeon, who grew up in a politically active family, has been making his own mark in public service and politics for more than 20 years. 'If I had not gone to graduate school first, I would undoubtedly have run for elected office,' he says.

But he did go to graduate school, earning his PhD in clinical psychology at Purdue University in 1969. Upon graduation, he worked for the Peace Corps Training Center at the University of Hawaii in Hilo. After a year of service-including stints as a field assessment officer in Fiji and the Phillipines with his wife Jean-he became a clinical psychologist at the Diamond Health Mental Health Center and Hawaii State Hospital. He stayed there for three years.

During that time, he also began working toward a master's in public health at the University of Hawaii, which required him to find a public policy internship. He secured a post with Sen. Inouye-his first day of work coinciding with the opening of the Watergate hearings.

With the exception of a brief period running a congressional campaign for Cecil Heftel of Hawaii, he has been with Inouye ever since, moving up the ranks to become one of the senator's key advisers. To add to his credentials, he earned a JD in law at Catholic University in 1980.

Working for APA

His involvement in APA started in the mid-70s. Since then, he's been elected to the Council of Representatives twice, served one term on the Board of Directors and two terms as Recording Secretary for the Board.

He is a past president of APA divisions 12 (Clinical), 29 (Psychotherapy) and 41 (Psychology and Law) and has served on numerous APA boards and committees, including the ad hoc Committee on Legal Issues, the Board of Professional Affairs and the Finance Committee.

Currently he serves as editor of Professional Psychology and section editor for American Psychologist.

He greatly enjoys the camaraderie of APA, which he sees as one big family. 'Practice, science, education, public interest-we all depend on each other far more than many of us realize,' he says.

Pushing for privileges

DeLeon sees the need to push psychology into the 21st century by expanding telehealth, reaching out to more psychology communities and-one of the issues closest to his heart-securing prescription privileges for psychologists. 'In the next three years, we'll see the first state gain privileges,' he predicts. 'In a decade, all states will give psychologists the right.'

Right now, Georgia and Louisiana are close to securing that right, though any rural state could do it 'once they decide to,' he says.

He emphasizes he's not pushing for prescription privileges just so psychologists can wear another hat. Instead, he sees it as a way to dramatically improve the nation's public health.

'Eighty percent of the prescriptions written for mental health disorders are written by physicians with little or no mental health training. That's absurd,' he says. 'The data show that psychologists who are trained to prescribe medication can do so competently.'

And, if psychologists had the right to prescribe, use of medication would be completely different, he says, citing observations by Morgan Sammons, PhD, one of a handful of psychologists who was trained and given the authority to prescribe through a U.S. Department of Defense Demonstration Project. Sammons believes that psychologists are likely to use psychotropics at vastly lower rates than their colleagues in psychiatry or general practice.

'That's what we need to push for,' DeLeon stresses. 'The most appropriate use of medication and therapy given a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, given the diagnosis of schizophrenia and so on.'

Fostering good ideas

In his years as a U.S. Senate staffer, DeLeon has been able to show public policy-makers the contributions psychologists have made-and have the potential to make.

But now that he's APA president-elect, he needs to be careful not to take unfair advantage of his access to the Senate to promote psychology, he says. 'I've already notified the Senate Ethics Committee that I've been elected and I must be very careful not to confuse my roles as APA president and Senate staff member.'

He sees his job as taking a step back, looking at the broader picture and 'implementing other people's good ideas.'

'I can be a nice catalyst for change,' he says. 'For example, it would ludicrous for me to second-guess the members of APA's Committee for the Advancement of Psychology Practice. They are the experts on practice issues and I want to help them achieve what they want to do.'

He wants APA to keep up the work it's doing in several areas, such as reaching out to students through the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students and working more closely with state associations.

He also hopes APA will address the controversy over how the master's degree in psychology should be recognized by the profession.

'I don't have the solution, but I would like to see if our system is willing to address it,' he explains. 'We have one extreme camp that believes a master's degree psychologist is an oxymoron. We have another extreme group that says they should be psychology's extenders, just as physician assistants are to physicians, or that they should work independently. The key is to decide. A mature profession decides what to do, it doesn't sit back and complain.'

With APA headquarters four short blocks from his Senate office, DeLeon could easily become involved in the day-to-day activities of running the association.

But he won't, he says. First because he has enormous faith in APA's leadership and staff, he says.

And, too, because he puts spending time with his family as a priority. The DeLeons have two children-Patrick Daniel Ninoa, a senior at Dartmouth College, and Katherine Maila Maile, a freshman in high school. He prides himself on attending every one of her soccer games.

Rather than micromanage the association, he says, 'I'm going to try to add onto that which is already good.'



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