New Mexico Psychological Association Passes Protection of Psychlogical Testing

[edieb]

A little bit of good new for professional psychology: NM just passed a Protection of Psychological Testing Act. This make it the second state, after Louisiana, to legally restrict all psychological testing to the purview of professional psychology!

If you live in a state other than Louisiana or New Mexico, get involved with your state psychological association and get a bill passed in your state. In MT and IN, social workers and LPCs recently got the right to conduct psychological and neuropsychological testing...

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[MrQuack]

A little bit of good new for professional psychology: NM just passed a Protection of Psychological Testing Act. This make it the second state, after Louisiana, to legally restrict all psychological testing to the purview of professional psychology!

If you live in a state other than Louisiana or New Mexico, get involved with your state psychological association and get a bill passed in your state. In MT and IN, social workers and LPCs recently got the right to conduct psychological and neuropsychological testing...

What's Montana? Sorry just kidding. Yeah that really grinds my gears. I think you should not be able to offer testing services unless you have a firm clinical and, equally important, a firm RESEARCH background. This latter caveat would drastically circumscribe the field.

I do not understand why people can argue for models which are light on the research component. How can we separate the science from the practice when psychology and its many therapies are still being formulated? This is not physiology/anatomy people, we are still figuring it out.

A lot of times these groups claim they get research exposure, but a quick look through the curriculum of many of these programs reveals otherwise...little to no stat courses and only basic methodology courses that can be found at the undergraduate level. I'm confused

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

A little bit of good new for professional psychology: NM just passed a Protection of Psychological Testing Act. This make it the second state, after Louisiana, to legally restrict all psychological testing to the purview of professional psychology!

If you live in a state other than Louisiana or New Mexico, get involved with your state psychological association and get a bill passed in your state. In MT and IN, social workers and LPCs recently got the right to conduct psychological and neuropsychological testing...

I'm going to point out the obvious....but what the heck:

Both of those states have strong psychology lobbies, backed with $ and support....and both of those states have pro-psychology laws in place. I wish the APA and the rest of the state psych associations would pay attention. Both of those states are on my short list because of lifestyle reasons, they just jumped up in my book.

If I were a lawyer in either MT or IN, I'd be on the look out for patients/clients that got screwed by the "expert opinion" of a SW or LPC who wrote a psychological/neuropsychological report. I can't believe a child custody case or an estate/trust case hasn't come up yet....both areas are highly litigious, and a case like that would be low hanging fruit for a halfway decent lawyer. It doesn't take a ton of case law to scare away other legislatures from enacting bad laws.

A small PAC could wreak havoc in either state with some well placed advertisements and a good PR firm. Any of the incumbents who supported that legislation could definitely be challenged if even a handful of cases materialized where a person/family got screwed by a bad report. Politicians have lost re-election for far less. Of course, psychologists are generally lacking the knowledge and/or intestinal fortitude to actually make noise about bad legislation or support a PAC that could actually make a difference....save for NM and LA.

 

[edieb]

American Psychiatric Association Works with National Association of Social Work to Fight for Nationwide Access to Neuropsychological and Psychological Testing

Legislation providing the Indiana State Psychology Board’s authority to create a restricted test list (RTL) has been repealed. HB 1821 removes language originally included in the counselor licensure law which passed in 1997. While this language has been in statute for ten years, a RTL was never successfully adopted despite multiple attempts by the Indiana Psychology Board in the last ten years. Effective July 1, 2007, this new law removes the authority of the Indiana Board of Psychology to create a Restricted Test List (RTL).

Members of a coalition including multiple state and national organizations and organized by the Fair Access Coalition on Testing (FACT) worked successfully as a group to advocate against the formation of an RTL and the repeal of the RTL language. FACT is a multi-disciplinary, non-profit organization that advocates for all health care and educational professionals to be able to administer and interpret tests for which they have been appropriately trained. It is located in the National Board for Certified Counselors headquarters.

FACT would like to express appreciation to all organizations and their individual members who were active in this advocacy effort. Efforts included contacting legislators at key times over the last 10 years and research to aid in the efforts. The success of repealing the RTL happened because of the collective efforts of state and national organizations, their individual members, and others concerned about this legislation. By working together, we helped key decision makers understand the importance of appropriate professional accessibility to instruments that ultimately leads to the greatest accessibility of quality services for the citizens of Indiana.

 

[cara susanna]

Well, I guess I can always move to New Mexico. My boyfriend says it's nice there.

 

[futureapppsy2]

FWIW, some prominent LCPCs in MT were against them getting assessment privileges (and gave public opinion as such) because they *knew* they weren't trained in psychological or neuropsych assessment. Of course, those were academic LCPCs, so they were probably more conscious of such issues.

Well, I guess I can always move to New Mexico. My boyfriend says it's nice there.

It is--of course, I'm biased towards the West being awesome in general.

 

[2012PhD]

FWIW, some prominent LCPCs in MT were against them getting assessment privileges (and gave public opinion as such) because they *knew* they weren't trained in psychological or neuropsych assessment. Of course, those were academic LCPCs, so they were probably more conscious of such issues.



It is--of course, I'm biased towards the West being awesome in general.

Yes! except for california, which is in deep **** financially and began the whole unregulated professional school movement---gotta love the entrepenerial spirit there. Pretty soon all the psychologists in california will be from professional schools only.

 

[Shatani]

A little bit of good new for professional psychology: NM just passed a Protection of Psychological Testing Act. This make it the second state, after Louisiana, to legally restrict all psychological testing to the purview of professional psychology!

If you live in a state other than Louisiana or New Mexico, get involved with your state psychological association and get a bill passed in your state. In MT and IN, social workers and LPCs recently got the right to conduct psychological and neuropsychological testing...

i find that last part chilling! when i was an intern (at the place i work now) there was an LPC who was trying to encroach, insisting that she had learned about the WAIS and was taught to administer/score/interpret, but had merely forgotten the details. she was an unqualified disaster! just the questions she was asking me and my supervisor and fellow interns told me that she had NO idea what she was doing and any class she took for her masters program was clearly not meant to teach her how to do this....

i couldnt believe the higher ups let her do that. it was an atrocity.

 

[2012PhD]

i find that last part chilling! when i was an intern (at the place i work now) there was an LPC who was trying to encroach, insisting that she had learned about the WAIS and was taught to administer/score/interpret, but had merely forgotten the details. she was an unqualified disaster! just the questions she was asking me and my supervisor and fellow interns told me that she had NO idea what she was doing and any class she took for her masters program was clearly not meant to teach her how to do this....

i couldnt believe the higher ups let her do that. it was an atrocity.

Is there anyone to report this to at a hospital? Do hospitals have an ethics oversight committees or something? We should be reporting this type of unprofessional conduct if we can!

 

[pingouin]

American Psychiatric Association Works with National Association of Social Work to Fight for Nationwide Access to Neuropsychological and Psychological Testing

Legislation providing the Indiana State Psychology Board’s authority to create a restricted test list (RTL) has been repealed. HB 1821 removes language originally included in the counselor licensure law which passed in 1997. While this language has been in statute for ten years, a RTL was never successfully adopted despite multiple attempts by the Indiana Psychology Board in the last ten years. Effective July 1, 2007, this new law removes the authority of the Indiana Board of Psychology to create a Restricted Test List (RTL).

Members of a coalition including multiple state and national organizations and organized by the Fair Access Coalition on Testing (FACT) worked successfully as a group to advocate against the formation of an RTL and the repeal of the RTL language. FACT is a multi-disciplinary, non-profit organization that advocates for all health care and educational professionals to be able to administer and interpret tests for which they have been appropriately trained. It is located in the National Board for Certified Counselors headquarters.

FACT would like to express appreciation to all organizations and their individual members who were active in this advocacy effort. Efforts included contacting legislators at key times over the last 10 years and research to aid in the efforts. The success of repealing the RTL happened because of the collective efforts of state and national organizations, their individual members, and others concerned about this legislation. By working together, we helped key decision makers understand the importance of appropriate professional accessibility to instruments that ultimately leads to the greatest accessibility of quality services for the citizens of Indiana.

Could you cite the link to where you got this info?

I Googled the headline and the only exact hit was to this thread.

The body of the quote can be found at FACT's website, but as you can see by going to their board of directors page, neither the APA-iatry nor the NASW appear to be involved with this organization.

Thanks.

 

[cara susanna]

Reading their website... ugh.

The Fair Access Coalition on Testing (FACT) is a non-profit corporation which was formed in February 1996 to educate such professionals not credentialed as psychologists who have been adversely affected by restrictions on assessment practices imposed by state psychology licensure boards.

Adversely affected how?

 

[PsyDLICSW]

i find that last part chilling! when i was an intern (at the place i work now) there was an LPC who was trying to encroach, insisting that she had learned about the WAIS and was taught to administer/score/interpret, but had merely forgotten the details. she was an unqualified disaster! just the questions she was asking me and my supervisor and fellow interns told me that she had NO idea what she was doing and any class she took for her masters program was clearly not meant to teach her how to do this....

i couldnt believe the higher ups let her do that. it was an atrocity.

I can't beleive that LPCs and SWs are encroaching on our domain. I have an MSW and the amount of therapy training I received was DEPLORABLE. No social worker from my program or any other should be doing testing. I have no problem with counselors and social workers working in a psychometrician capacity. I wokred as a psychometrician with a BA in psych. But it takes not only courses but a strong background in psychometrics and training from a licensed psychologist in a doctoral program to just set the foundation for testing. Social workers in my experience don't like testing, they feel that it negatively labels and oppresses people. I think they just want the money involved with testing. I went back to psychology so I can do testing and I would feel like a incompetent fraud doing testing without a PsyD or PhD. We are the ones trained to do interpretation and recomemdations. I think the APA needs to nip this in the bud and advocate for our porfession.

I wonder if the American Psychiatric Association is in with National Association of Social Workers on social workers doing testing because they want to get back at us for "encroaching" on their prescription domain. I am for prescription privileges, but I would choose to have testing as a protected service for psychologists only rather than have script privileges. Social workers and counselors should not be doing testing peroid!

 

[edieb]

People, this is the profession's problem. Instead of getting upset about this, contact your state psychological association and get involved in getting a bill introduced to protect psychological testing from ppl without training. DOn't just sit around and complain!

 

[PsyDLICSW]

People, this is the profession's problem. Instead of getting upset about this, contact your state psychological association and get involved in getting a bill introduced to protect psychological testing from ppl without training. DOn't just sit around and complain!

Point taken

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Anyone who is interested in public policy should contact the APA Public Policy Office. They are responsible for disseminating information about legislation and regulatory issues that impact psychology.

Here is their contact info:

APA Public Policy Office
E-mail: [email protected]
Ph: (202)336-6062

 

[Shatani]

i havent directly contacted my state's PA, but from what ive heard in my years living here for school...theyve been the ones introducing the idea of letting social workers and master's level clinicians do assessments "with adequate training."

i do plan to look into this more though.

 

[edieb]

i havent directly contacted my state's PA, but from what ive heard in my years living here for school...theyve been the ones introducing the idea of letting social workers and master's level clinicians do assessments "with adequate training."

i do plan to look into this more though.

If they have adequate training, I think it would be fine. HOwever, that should be something like an additional Master's degree and passing a stdized test.


I have a hard time believing your SPA would push this...you may want to check on it more. Something tells me that may be a nasty rumor