I am a clinical psychologist on faculty at Vanderbilt University and a strong proponent of reaffirming the value of science to the profession. I believe that science enhances practice and that practice enhances science. Psychology does many things of value to the public, and it serves both the public interest and our own for the public to be aware of the evidence in that regard.
I have a long-standing interest in the treatment and prevention of depression. My work has shown that psychosocial interventions can be at least as efficacious as medication, and longer lasting. These same interventions can be used to prevent initial onsets and keep children and adolescents at risk from ever experiencing the disorder. Psychosocial interventions can produce change that lasts beyond the end of treatment for most nonpsychotic disorders. That is a claim that no psychiatric medication can make.
I am a psychopathologist by training and a psychologist by profession. I received my doctorate from Florida State University in 1977 and completed my internship at the University of Pennsylvania, where I apprenticed under Aaron T. Beck, MD. I am something of a hybrid; my core training was in psychology but I also had considerable exposure to biological psychiatry. In any "turf wars" with psychiatry over treatment efficacy, we have the empirical data (especially long-term) and it makes sense to use it. That being said, I count many biological psychiatrists among my closest colleagues and I stand ready to make common cause with anyone who uses science to serve the public interest.
I am a past president of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy (ABCT) and the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology. I have received awards for excellence in research from APA and ABCT. I am a former director of clinical training and received APA's Florence Halpern Award for distinguished professional contribution to clinical psychology. I see patients in the context of my clinical trials; for over 40 years, my father was a practicing clinical psychologist with a strong dynamic background. My wife is a developmental psychopathologist who does prevention research (better to prevent a problem than to simply treat it) and our son is a neuroscientist. I believe that basic research informs clinical science and clinical science informs basic research. It is easier to detect an effect than it is to explain it, but what we are able to explain we can better treat and better still prevent. Much that we do best is drawn from basic science and what we do best has real value for the larger public.
I am a scientist-practitioner-educator who is committed to doing right by the members of APA and for the public. When what we do is in the public interest, our professional interests will be well served. When we ground what we do in the basic and applied sciences, then we best serve the public interest.
Hollon's candidate statement
Psychosocial interventions are at least as efficacious as and more enduring than medications for most nonpsychotic disorders and yet psychotherapy is losing ground to medications. Nearly twice as many depressions are now being treated with medications as opposed to psychotherapy. This is a complete reversal from what was done as recently as 25 years ago and quite different from what is now done in the United Kingdom and Western Europe. A major difference is that those other Western democracies generate clinical practice guidelines to educate the public and to guide reimbursement, whereas we do not.
APA has decided to generate such guidelines. The first guideline on the treatment of PTSD was just approved as APA policy, with guidelines on depression and childhood obesity to follow. This is good for the profession and even better for the public. I chaired the steering committee that advised APA on guideline generation and I am proud of what we accomplished.
The reimbursement landscape in this country is about to undergo a major change and it serves the interests of neither the public nor the profession to be left out of the process. We are in the enviable position of having compelling data that speak to the value of the services we provide. It would be a mistake not to take the lead in generating the guidelines that will shape the nature of decisions regarding reimbursement for services provided for years to come.
If elected president, I will make common cause with other professions like psychiatry to generate multidisciplinary guidelines that the public can trust. The surest way to safeguard the public interest is to work across disciplines to get a fair and unbiased read of the empirical literature; when that is done psychosocial interventions most often will rise to the top.