Something new is stirring in psychology. For so long now we have been afflicted by the ills of managed care. Discouragement and depression have been rampant among our colleagues. I wrote in a recent column that, since the beginning of this year, I have noticed a perceptible change in spirit at several psychology meetings. While acknowledging that a few good meetings do not necessarily indicate a sea change, I wondered if we are not in the beginning stages of a renaissance in psychology.

     I have also noticed another trend over the last few months. We seem to be looking with new vigor at our identity and priorities as a discipline and as a profession. This trend seems to be related to the new signs of a positive spirit. For, when would be a better time to examine our identity and priorities than when the clouds are lifting and the future seems brighter? Priority-setting was a major focus of the February Council meeting, where Council engaged in an exercise using nominal group process (which begins with a brainstorming process followed by an allocation of “dollars” to the list of priorities in order to determine their relative ranking). Priority-setting was picked up at the Board of Directors Retreat in April, where the focus expanded to also include our identity as psychologists in the new health and educational environments. I have also seen this in other venues, such as winter meetings of APA divisions.

     The Board made a commitment to engage all of the constituencies of the Association in this priority-setting exercise. In anticipation of that, I thought it might stimulate thinking to look at some of the priorities that have been generated, focusing on the top seven priorities generated by Council.

     The top priority was to “Enhance membership recruitment, retention and services in APA”. This item is a priority of both President Norine Johnson and President-elect Phillip Zimbardo. It is a top priority for good reason. An analysis of membership data over the past 10 years reveals some concerning trends. For decades we had been able to count on continued growth in paid membership, but for the past five years growth has been stagnant. Meanwhile, the number of unpaid members and dues exempt member has been increasing. Hence it is indeed important that we make it a top priority to reverse these trends.

     The second priority was to “Enhance the public awareness of psychology, and generate a more realistic public image of the field”. This is an area in which we have made significant progress, thanks to visionaries such as Stan Moldawsky, Dorothy Cantor, and Ron Fox, as well as APA staffers Russ Newman and Rhea Farberman, with the Public Education Campaign, and the MTV collaboration on the warning signs of youth violence. However, there is clearly room for improvement, given the stigma that still remains in our society regarding mental health.

     The third priority was to “Promote efforts to utilize psychological knowledge to inform and develop public policy”. As APA Past-President Pat DeLeon has repeatedly said, we are a learned profession and have much to offer in the public policy development process. Psychological science and practice can inform virtually every aspect of our society from education and health care to corrections and public safety. However, for whatever reasons, many of us are reluctant to enter the realm of public policy. We need to change this and make informing public policy a priority. We should follow the examples of colleagues who have made great strides in this area, such as those who serve on public policy boards and commissions and in state legislatures and, of course, the sterling examples of our two colleagues who serve in the U.S. Congress, Ted Strickland and Brian Baird.

     The fourth priority was to “Enhance diversity in all aspects of the psychological profession, including membership, students in the pipeline, APA governance, and course content”. In March, the press announced that for the first time in history, the state of California no longer had a white majority in its population. This is clearly a harbinger of the future. For psychology to remain relevant in an increasingly multicultural society, we must do more to increase the diversity of our profession. Further we need to think of diversity not only terms of race and ethnicity, but also in terms of gender, sexual orientation, age, and disability status. Colleagues such Derald Wing Sue, Lisa Porche-Burke, Steven James, Melba Vasquez, and Rosie Phillips Bingham are to be acknowledged for their major contributions in this area, in coordinating the highly successful second National Multicultural Conference and Summit (NMCS 2) held in Santa Barbara, California in January, 2001, which was attended by over 800 psychologists. The fifth priority was to “Increase advocacy for psychological science and for the academic discipline of psychology, including the promotion of psychology as a science”. Our scientific heritage is one of our greatest assets, and it is clearly in our best interests to not only support it but also to strongly promote it. Whether we are “scientist-practitioners” or “practitioners informed by science”, we stand above other professions that do not have such a strong science base. I recently saw new evidence of this as I was attempting to negotiate a new practicum experience in psychopharmacology for my postdoctoral master’s degree students in clinical psychopharmacology, when the chief psychiatrist of a major teaching hospital indicated his willingness to consider my proposal because he thought it would upgrade the science in his department.

     The sixth priority was to “Advocate prescription privileges for appropriately trained psychologists”. The prescription privilege agenda has the capacity to dramatically accelerate the evolution of professional psychology, and to move us closer to fulfilling our potential of being a premier primary health care profession. The Department of Defense Psychopharmacology Demonstration Project graduates who are now prescribing have recently demonstrated through the USGAO report of 1999 that not only will properly trained prescribing psychologists NOT be a public health hazard as psychiatry has so ignominiously claimed, but also that such psychologists will do an outstanding job at psychodiagnosis and at expertly combining psychological and pharmacological treatment. Our colleagues in Guam and New Mexico are making this a reality.

     The seventh priority was to “Expand activities in health psychology, and promote the further use of psychology in health care practices”. One of the most important issues for the future of professional psychology is the redefinition of psychology from specialty mental health care to primary health care. As a specialty profession of mental health care, we deal primarily with the people who self-identify as having psychological problems and who have access to a mental health specialist, which is just a fraction of those who need psychological services. As a primary health care profession we would be able to serve the much larger group of people who do not have access to mental health care or who do not identify their problem as psychological. Remember that seven out of the nine leading causes of death have significant behavioral components, that as much as 75% of all visits to primary care medical personnel are for problems with a psychological origin or psychological component (including those with unhealthy lifestyle habits such as smoking, those with chronic illnesses, and those with medical compliance issues), and that the vast majority of people receiving mental health treatment are cared for by medical professionals with minimal specific training in mental health. The Cartesian worldview, which separates mental health from physical health, is breaking down and, as a result, psychology has a tremendous opportunity to evolve into a premier primary health care profession.

     I hope this column helps you consider what your priorities are for psychology and for the Association as we begin this process of reflection. As always, I welcome your thoughts on this column. You can most easily contact me via email: (new address): levant@uakron.edu

Biographical Sketch

     Ronald F. Levant, Ed.D., A.B.P.P., has been reelected Recording Secretary of the American Psychological Association. He was the Chair of the APA Committee for the Advancement of Professional Practice (CAPP) from 1993-95, a member of the Board of Directors of Division 29 (1991-94), a member of the APA Board of Directors (1995-97), and APA Recording Secretary (1998-2000). He is Dean, Center for Psychological Studies, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, FL.

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