Report of the Representatives of the American Psychological Association to the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

1937 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 01-07
Author(s):  
James F. Welles

A reviewer of a book I wrote claimed an idea presented therein could be found elsewhere. Nine years later, no one could say where, but no one would correct the erroneous claim, so what be-gan as an effort to obtain a redress of a legitimate grievance slowly degenerated into a tour d’farce of a surreal ethics warp in our intellectual community. The citations submitted to docu-ment the claim failed to do so, and the file on the dispute maintained by the American Psychological Association (APA) really is not about my case at all. The University of Connecticut (UConn) and the American Association for the Advancement of Sci-ence (AAAS) failed to hold anyone accountable. There was a basic conflict between the conduct of officials of all these organiza-tions and their ethical codes. In a culture of intellectual cor-ruption, behavior consisted of a pervasive and extended cover-up characterized by sophistry, secrecy, fantasy, irrelevance, ra-tionalization, misattribution, misrepresentation, fabrication, falsification, failure to communicate and an adamant refusal to deal logically and fairly with the facts of the case. This demon-strated a complete lack of cognitive integrity and constituted a total betrayal of the academic/scientific commitment to truth.


2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-524
Author(s):  
Brent Pollitt

Mental illness is a serious problem in the United States. Based on “current epidemiological estimates, at least one in five people has a diagnosable mental disorder during the course of a year.” Fortunately, many of these disorders respond positively to psychotropic medications. While psychiatrists write some of the prescriptions for psychotropic medications, primary care physicians write more of them. State legislatures, seeking to expand patient access to pharmacological treatment, granted physician assistants and nurse practitioners prescriptive authority for psychotropic medications. Over the past decade other groups have gained some form of prescriptive authority. Currently, psychologists comprise the primary group seeking prescriptive authority for psychotropic medications.The American Society for the Advancement of Pharmacotherapy (“ASAP”), a division of the American Psychological Association (“APA”), spearheads the drive for psychologists to gain prescriptive authority. The American Psychological Association offers five main reasons why legislatures should grant psychologists this privilege: 1) psychologists’ education and clinical training better qualify them to diagnose and treat mental illness in comparison with primary care physicians; 2) the Department of Defense Psychopharmacology Demonstration Project (“PDP”) demonstrated non-physician psychologists can prescribe psychotropic medications safely; 3) the recommended post-doctoral training requirements adequately prepare psychologists to prescribe safely psychotropic medications; 4) this privilege will increase availability of mental healthcare services, especially in rural areas; and 5) this privilege will result in an overall reduction in medical expenses, because patients will visit only one healthcare provider instead of two–one for psychotherapy and one for medication.


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