Candidates for APA President
What do you see as the most challenging set of educational issues that APA should address and how would you propose moving on those issues?
This is not your mother's, or even your older brother's, psychology. Globalization and advances in technology have changed our society in ways unimaginable when many of us were receiving our doctorates. I am typing this response on a laptop. I ran the data for my thesis on a mainframe. As we are psychologists, not psychics, I'm not proposing that we should anticipate the ways the world will change in the next 30 years. I am proposing that APA convene forums-virtual and face-to-face-for exploring ways to make our training more responsive to social and technological changes as they emerge.
What do you see as the big opportunities for professional psychology in the 21st century? And what do we need to begin doing right now to capture them?
Prescription privileges offer an as-yet-unrealized opportunity to better serve culturally, economically and geographically disadvantaged populations. Psychologists with prescribing authority will benefit those who need us most. Additionally, psychologists will prescribe as an option not a reflex. Continued advocacy with legislators and the public remains APA's best strategy.
Evidence-based practice can offer the opportunity for constructive collaboration between our research and clinical communities to ends that will enhance psychology's profile as a health-care discipline. APA, as our collective voice, must ensure that evidence-based practice is never reduced to a cost-cutting cudgel or a mechanism for denigrating clinical expertise.
