POPPP

We, the undersigned psychologists, petition the legislature and governor and others concerned about quality healthcare to OPPOSE and/or VETO any efforts to allow psychologists to prescribe medications. We consider prescribing by psychologists to be controversial, even among psychologists. The movement for prescriptive privileges originated within the Psychology profession, rather than being championed by other stakeholders, such as patient advocacy or public health groups. As psychologists, we oppose this proposal because we believe that it poses unnecessary risks to the public and would be an inappropriate and inefficient mechanism of addressing mental health needs of the population.

Psychologists have made major contributions to human health and well-being and will continue to do so. The profession of Psychology has made major contributions to understanding human development throughout the life cycle and to a multitude of dimensions of human functioning as individuals, groups, communities, societies and cultures. Despite these contributions, there are limits to the practices that psychologists can undertake responsibly as professionals. We believe that prescribing medications goes beyond psychologists’ competence.

Psychotropic drugs are medications that have multiple effects on the human body. These effects are complex and result from the interaction among patients’ unique health status, their other prescribed medications, as well as their diets, lifestyles, and other factors. Although the therapeutic effects of prescribed medications can be very positive, unintended adverse drug reactions are common. To minimize the risk of potential adverse effects, that can even have life-threatening consequences, we believe that medications should be prescribed only by professionals who have undergone suitable medical training that prepared them to manage these medications within the context of patients’ overall health conditions. Patients have a right to expect that their medications will be managed by professionals whose education adequately trains them to understand their health history, and assess their current health status, and the potential broad systemic effects of their medications. Unlike the training of current prescribers in other professions, the doctoral training of psychologists historically does not equip them to prescribe and manage medications safely.

Unfortunately, the American Psychological Association’s (APA) model for training doctoral psychologists to obtain limited training in psychopharmacology, after they complete graduate school,l does not match the levels required of other prescribing professionals (e.g., physicians, nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, optometrists) in terms of their overall training in matters directly related to managing medications. The APA model is substantially less rigorous and comprehensive than the training required for all other prescribing disciplines. Whereas the training of psychologists in certain professional activities, such as psychotherapy and psychological assessment, is generally more comprehensive than that of practitioners in other fields, this is not the case for training in clinical psychopharmacology. The APA training model for prescribing even fails to meet the recommendations of APA’s own experts in its Ad Hoc Task Force of Psychopharmacology (e.g., in terms of undergraduate prerequisites in biology and other sciences) and has other inadequacies (e.g., lack of explicit requirements for supervision; accreditation of programs).

It is noteworthy that the APA training model is substantively less rigorous than the training that the 10 psychologists undertook in the experimental program of the Department of Defense (DoD). Despite the alarmingly small sample of that pilot program, which precludes generalizing from it, the fact that the current training model is far less comprehensive, and the fact that inadequacies were noted in some of the graduates of the DoD program, proponents of psychologist prescribing make the dubious claim that the DoD program justifies prescribing by psychologists. It does not!

Proponents of psychologist prescribing also have misleadingly invoked a range of unrelated issues to advocate for their agenda. For example, they point to problems in the healthcare system, such as the rural and other populations that are underserved. Whereas such problems are indeed serious and warrant changes in the healthcare system, allowing psychologists to prescribe is neither an appropriate nor an effective response. Permitting relatively marginally trained providers to provide services is not an acceptable way to increase access to healthcare services where high quality health care is needed. Rather than relying on under-trained psychologists to prescribe, it would be much more sensible to develop mechanisms to facilitate psychologists’ providing those services that they are highly qualified to provide (e.g., counseling) to those populations and to innovate other approaches for medically-qualified providers (for example, collaboration, telehealth) to leverage available services. It should be noted that most psychologists practice in urban and suburban areas: There is no reason to expect that prescribing psychologists would have a significant impact on compensating for the shortages of psychiatrists in rural and economically disadvantaged areas, where relatively few actually work. Other remedies are needed to address such problems that would not compromise the quality of care.

A final concern is the limited expertise of psychology regulatory boards to effectively regulate prescriptive practicing. Given the similar limits in medication-related training of most psychologists who serve on these boards to that of other psychologists, and the fact that psychology boards historically have not overseen prescribing, we question whether regulatory boards have the resources and systems to provide effective oversight of psychologist prescribing.

Rather than permitting psychologists to prescribe medications, we advocate enhancement of currently available collaborative models in the delivery of mental health care, in which licensed psychologists work collaboratively with fully qualified prescribers to provide safe and effective services for those individuals who may benefit from psychoactive medications.