Date: September 21, 2004
Contact:: Peter Wilson
202.336.5910

APA’s Russ Newman Testifies On Behalf of New Mexico’s Important Step Toward Comprehensive Mental Health Care

WASHINGTON – Russ Newman, the American Psychological Association’s (APA) executive director for professional practice, testified before New Mexico’s Psychologist Examiner’s Board in support of regulations that would implement the state’s new law granting prescriptive authority to psychologists.

New Mexico was the first state to enact a law granting psychologists the right to prescribe. Seeing a psychiatrist in New Mexico can take up to six weeks and an hours long commute. HB 170 and the regulations to implement it will expand the pool of mental health care providers by providing additional training in medicine and pharmacology to psychologists who are already experienced clinicians with doctoral level training.

In his remarks Newman thanked the board for its work developing a legal and regulatory “safety net” for prescribing psychologists and their patients. The regulations are a collaboration between the Psychologist Examiner’s Board and the state’s Medical Board.

“The prescribing psychologist statute and proposed regulations are quite comprehensive, careful, and well thought through in setting up extensive education and training requirements for prescribing psychologists which include numerous check points and safeguards,” Newman said .

Under the regulations, psychologists will undergo a rigorous training period. The period includes classroom study, physician supervised clinical and assessment practicums, followed by a standardized national examination. Prescribing psychologists will also undergo a two year conditional prescribing period overseen by a physician. Only at that point will prescribing psychologists work independently, albeit in close collaboration with the patient’s physician.

“The collaboration provisions of the regulations codify good clinical practice,” Newman said.

This collaboration includes not only having the psychologist initiate contact with the patient’s physician when medication is warranted, but also having the physician initiate contact with the patient’s psychologist when any changes in the patient’s medical condition might affect the treatment being provided by the psychologist.

“This ongoing two-way communication is a model of integrated care,” Newman said.

“With the adoption of these regulations, the New Mexico psychologists who have completed, or will complete the required didactic and practicum training will be in a position to provide badly needed psychological and psychopharmacological treatment services, working in collaboration with patients’ primary treating health care practitioners,” Newman said.

The American Psychological Association (APA), located in Washington, DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world’s largest association of psychologists. APA’s membership includes more than 150,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its 53 divisions and its affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science and profession, and as a means of promoting health, education, and human welfare.

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