In the year since Council adopted APA’s Strategic Plan, we’ve been elevating our communications with psychologists, with policymakers, and with the public—not only doing new things but doing things we have done before in new ways. The goal is to be more strategic and innovative in both who we talk to and how we talk about the value of psychology in addressing critical issues.
Talking with policymakers is nothing new for APA. What is new is our intentionality in working with state-level leaders to bring a wider range of voices to the table to address national policies. While the opioid crisis has devastated the entire country, certain states have been extraordinarily affected. To impact the national conversation on opioids, APA is working at both the state and federal level on complex issues like training the psychology workforce to better address pain in the context of behavioral health treatment. That includes a recent forum in Ohio, cohosted with the Ohio Psychological Association, on the role of psychological pain management care in addressing the opioid epidemic. Conversations and actions like these at the state level are positioning psychologists—and psychological science more broadly—as valuable contributors to national solutions.
Speaking up isn’t new, but APA is boldly addressing issues in real time and applying knowledge from the field to elevate the public’s understanding of psychology. That is evident in how we are speaking out when psychological science is being misrepresented in the mainstream media. For example, after President Trump noted that the 64 U.S. soldiers injured in the attack on a base in Iraq just “had headaches,” 2020 APA President Sandra L. Shullman, PhD, published an op-ed in the Military Times, raising awareness of the seriousness that traumatic brain injuries pose to service members and veterans.
Being vocal isn’t new, but APA is reacting faster to be heard on important issues for which psychology has unique and valuable expertise to contribute. For example, just this month, Dr. Shullman reacted to a report in The Washington Post that revealed that unaccompanied migrant children in federal custody have been denied asylum and further detained as a result of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s use of confidential psychotherapy information. “For this administration to weaponize these therapy sessions by ordering that the psychotherapy notes be passed to ICE is appalling,” Dr. Shullman said. Her reaction was shared the same day the article was released, and resulted not only in a surge of positive comments on social media, but a surge of phone calls from other journalists who wanted to learn more.
APA’s proactive, swift, and focused approach toward communication is helping others see psychology as a trustworthy and authoritative voice on a host of issues. How do we know? Signs of momentum and indications that, more and more, people are turning to APA. The media is more frequently turning to APA for experts on a growing number of issues, and from 2018–2019, there were over 17,500 media mentions of APA and psychology, marking a 306% increase over the previous year. Policymakers are reaching out to us to ask us to hold briefings and testify on the Hill, and are beginning to associate psychology with not only mental health, but areas like artificial intelligence and climate change. And the public is proactively tuning in to learn more about psychology, downloading the “Speaking of Psychology” podcast 1.5 million times and, through that interest, pushing it into Apple’s top 10 life science podcasts.
This year, we are committed to building on this solid foundation—continuing to position psychology in strategic conversations and partnerships and share psychological science in ways that help to advance our strategic priorities. As we all know, the better we communicate, the more the world can see the important value that psychology brings.