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Special Editor’s Column

The Lost Tribe

Editorial

Stanley Graham

Winter 2005 - Table of Contents

Contents
Editorial
President’s Message/Jeff Barnett

From the Editor/Ed Lundeen

Special Editor’s Column -- The Lost Tribe/Stanley Graham


The National Perspective
New Faces – New Opportunities /Pat DeLeon

Washington Update/Ron Levant

APA Council of Representatives Report/Melba Vasquez

Florida’s Hurricane’s/Hilda Besner


Classic Reprints
The Dark Side of Evidence Based Treatment/Ron Fox

On Being Called a Provider/Karen Shore

Hallucinations/Ed Zuckerman

Schneiders First Rank Symptoms

Consumer Groups Listing


Practioner's Information
How Psychotherapy Works/Stanley Moldawsky

Pharmacotherapy in GAD/Dan Egli

The Importance of Documenting Your Training/J.B. Goebel

LGB Clients amd Their Therapists/Armand R. Cerbone and Kristin A. Hancock

Stalkers: Not Just for celebrities Anymore, Part 1/Linda Grounds

The 97532 Procedure Code/Peter Magaro


Early Career Professionals and Continuing Education
My Experience with Psychopharmacology Training/Sally Horwatt

Mentors Corner/Miguel E. Gallardo and Michael J. Murphy


Eine Kleine Dummheit
A New DSM Disorder/Rodney Timbrook

Every year, for the last twenty years, I have started September with 10-15 psychology interns. They are the future of our profession and we treat them like orphans. By this I mean we send them through eight years or more of the most intense academic and practicum experience and leave them at the end of their internship with a meaningless year of postdoctoral requirements. Unable to qualify for third party payments, the touchstone to all practice, they are so often exploited with low paying work unrelated to their education and goals, while masters level professionals whisk through 484 days of inferior education and training, qualify for licenses and are gobbled up by the managed care system whose sacred word is “cheaper”. The fact that these psychology interns graduate with $100,000 or more of debt makes them victims of a system of managed care, insurance companies and bureaucracies.

The long ago authors of a requirement for a post doctoral or an additional year have told me that thirty or some odd years ago this was necessary because of the lack of training facilities outside of a few university clinics. This has long since been remedied with thousands of facilities available to meet intern requirements.

Year after year we have tried to alter this recommendation, which has been written into state license board requirements, as per our recommendation. The motion is sent to committee and usually not returned until the authors of a motion have left APA Council and the few people who judge this say we would be lowering standards. What we are doing is not lowering standards but setting up a village of misdirected, unfocused professionals, usually quite poorly paid, and perhaps doing work not particularly relevant to the psychologists goals or training.

Again this year I placed this motion in the agenda of the APA Council with some hope that we can give our interns some hope for the future. Interestingly the State of Washington has moved to abolish this additional year for licensure. I should mention that the people in Washington State, Ruth Paige, Doug Wear, Doug Haldeman, and Barry Anton represent a live wire group that has caused us to recall the feats of “the dirty dozen”, who injected the practice community into the mainstream of the American Psychological Association. Washington State is doing for young psychologists what New Mexico and Louisiana have done for prescription privileges for psychologists. If psychology is to have a future we have to do anything we can to encourage the new psychologist. Let’s insure the future by bringing them in to the family of psychology.

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