PsyD stigma issues?

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Jon....I didn't realize much of that, thanks for the heads up. I've been following them peripherally over the last couple of years and their focus on legislative work. They seem to want to get people involved, though I had no idea about lowering the standards, that is really disconcerning.

Good lord, who *can* we support that has our interests at heart? I'm frustrated by the APA (to answer the person above, it was 2 years ago in New Orleans where Dr. Phil spoke.), the NAPPP is trying to get people politically active....though maybe not on all issues I support (I support RxP in general, though with proper standards and in areas of need and not as purely a $$-source), and then there are the off-shoot organizations for niche work. I'm still feeling out groups that support what I support. Oh the irony of my search for people to support, it is like the '08 presidential election all over again for me. Poor Ron Paul. :(
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So we've done a great job identifying the problem. How do you fix it? Seriously, can you? I don't think the right answer is to get rid of professional schools. I still feel I picked the right program and am coming out a strong clinician and researcher. I was also accepted to what I felt was a weaker PhD program and opted for the PsyD. Does that still make me part of the problem? :D
 
Cosmo75 said:
No f--king way! How did I miss that?! *hangs head in shame*

I've been enjoying the discussion about the APA's stance on psychologists being employed at Gitmo. Though that's a whole other topic....
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Ya, I saw that (I was there) and they gave him some kind of lifetime achievement award too...

Mark
 
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Cosmo75 said:
So we've done a great job identifying the problem. How do you fix it? Seriously, can you? I don't think the right answer is to get rid of professional schools. I still feel I picked the right program and am coming out a strong clinician and researcher. I was also accepted to what I felt was a weaker PhD program and opted for the PsyD. Does that still make me part of the problem? :D
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No, it doesn't make you part of the problem. Again, I won't speak for others, but I place the blame squarely on the institutional level and won't fault a student for choosing to attend one - provided it was done for the right reasons and not out of a perception that one was easier than the other.

I don't think prof schools need to go away, but I think APA needs to suck it up, admit it screwed up, and come down like the hammer of god on some of these programs. Consistently place, or consistently get your accreditation kicked. Obviously no school matches 100%, but the occasional problem is a far cry from routinely placing below 60-70%. Opportunities to publish or even present - I find the fact that such a huge percentage of students aren't even presenting at a conference to be completely unacceptable, let alone the number who aren't publishing. Again, I'm not pushing a research agenda, there are plenty of clinical/case conferences out there as well. I'd be curious to see how that data breaks down by school. For gods sakes deny SOMEONE admission. I'm sorry, but of the 150 people who may have applied to school x, there are NOT 140 people qualified for admission. Either this is a scam to get a semester or two of tuition money from people they expect to fail out, or they just have much lower standards than other programs. Either way it is unacceptable.

I could go on for hours, and that would be days less than some people I know could go. Really, I would be happy if APA would at least move in the DIRECTION of raising standards, rather than lowering them, and start trying to kick around the schools that aren't pulling their academic weight rather than tiptoeing around in fear of pissing off certain schools.
 
The presentation thing surprised me. I admittedly am a slacker when it comes to posters/presentations, but people need to at least experience presenting at some level....whether it is a poster, student presentation, symposium, workshop, etc. I don't expect students to be putting on workshops at large conferences, but if I (already admitted slacker) can swing a 1-hour symposium at a mid-sized conference, others with more time, effort, and determination can probably secure multiple opportunities at some decent conferences. I use conferences for mostly networking not working, so i expected to be at the bottom of the ranking %'s for APPIC (and I was in the top half).

Publishing is another ball of wax...but students should at least go through the process once. Again as a non-researcher, I've still found opportunities to go through the process and experience those lovely, "Isn't that nice, you thought that'd get in on the first try....*laugh*, here are the changes you need to make before we move forward" letters. Yes, that was a projection....but I consider it part of the process. I'm actually looking at something I threw together 6 months ago that I could probably get published somewhere. It is far from groundbreaking (the use/mis-use of no-harm contracts), but it offers some good information that readers may actually find useful, or at least I hope so. It probably will get rejected at a bunch of places before accepted, but that is part of the process. I figure I can aim high and work my way down the list. Incidentally I'll be putting together a shorter article version for an upcoming SDN newsletter or front page article, so keep an eye out.
 
Jon, unfortunately APA was the cause of a great deal of these problems, and now they are unwilling to make the kind of changes needed to fix the problems. Though we differ on the severity of the solutions, I'm with you that change NEEDS to happen.

Upping the accreditation standards would take years (based on the re-accreditation agreements currently in place), but at least it'd be a start. I really wish my idea of APA-probation based on a floor percentile for internship could be used. Is it too much to expect a 70% match rate? Some programs have people wanting to stay in state so they take unaccredited placements.....but a lot of programs REQUIRE accredited (APA, APPIC, etc) internships to graduated. Why can't all programs require this? Some kind of standard, as licensure can be tricky without APA/APPIC accreditation anyway.

If only they let me be Dictator T4C.....if only. :D
 
Therapist4Chnge said:
The presentation thing surprised me. I admittedly am a slacker when it comes to posters/presentations, but people need to at least experience presenting at some level....whether it is a poster, student presentation, symposium, workshop, etc. I don't expect students to be putting on workshops at large conferences, but if I (already admitted slacker) can swing a 1-hour symposium at a mid-sized conference, others with more time, effort, and determination can probably secure multiple opportunities at some decent conferences.
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See, unless I misunderstood the stats, we aren't even talking first authorship - I believe ANY authorship still counts in the numbers APPIC releases, doesn't it?

If everyone gets to see the process as a first author, fantastic. But right now we're at the level where a substantial percentage of people apparently haven't even done something as simple as running an analysis on real data to get fourth or fifth authorship on something.

I agree everyone should have some experience with it, just so they know what the peer review process is like to better weigh what credit to give research they read. What concerns me more is that it seems to foster complete and total removal from any kind of professional community. To not even be last author on something small comes from being completely uninvolved in school. I mean really, this should happen almost incidentally - if people are becoming "experts" on a topic, they should be sought out, at least once, to do something small.

Plus, we have problems already with the science-practice gap. This is why I'm a big believer in getting training in both, but if people aren't willing to put even a TINY bit of effort into getting a little research experience, I see that as a very serious problem. How would it look if I came out with a clinical degree having never done an assessment other than on my classmates? It takes away from the academic community and the end-result is further "ivory towering" in academia, and practitioners behaving in misguided and irresponsible ways.
 
psychometric said:
Originally Posted by JockNerd
Gotta say I agree with Jon... plenty of great PsyD programs out there, and dedicated people can make things work for them, but overall creating massive amounts of questionably-trained Psych doc-levels under massive debt isn't going to help anyone and will drive the field down.

if they are dedicated students from great PsyD programs, how exactly are they questionably trained?
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I think his comment is on the variance in training...depending on the program, and sometimes within a program. As a Psy.D. I've seen this to some extent....the top people would be competitive in many programs, but the bottom %'s can drag down the overall #'s. It isn't exclusive to Psy.D.'s, as I know crappy Ph.D. students too, so take my comments about programs in general and not specific to one type of program.
 
Therapist4Chnge said:
I think his comment is on the variance in training...depending on the program, and sometimes within a program. As a Psy.D. I've seen this to some extent....the top people would be competitive in many programs, but the bottom %'s can drag down the overall #'s. It isn't exclusive to Psy.D.'s, as I know crappy Ph.D. students too, so take my comments about programs in general and not specific to one type of program.
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That's essentially what I meant. It's a lot easier to be a poor student when there are 100 people in your cohort instead of 6. There was a professional school student who posted a while back about how many people in his/her program just coasted through, doing the minimum amount of work possible.
 
In my experience, the degree has no bearing on the perception of you in the medical community or the population at large. Your performance does.

There are good and bad schools, both PhD and PsyD. Just as there are good and bad students. Going even further: there are good students who are more skilled at one thing than another (e.g., researchers with no personal skills). That is why we have referral. God knows I have avoided learnign about several things (e.g., child custody evals, hypnotherapy, how to type), so that I will be forced to refer out. None of this matters so long as I refer out. Should a person practice outside their area, we ahve the ethics board to deal with it. Neat, huh?
 
Jon Snow said:
How is that evaluated in a therapy domain, really? I'd say it's about networking and political savvy more than actual performance. If you're a hot woman or guy, and personable you can go a long way with little in the way of skill (just like in law, just like in sales, etc. . .).
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Sweet!

*fist pump*

--

On a more serious note.....I'd look towards outcome data to get an idea of a person's ability and skill set within the therapy domain. Obviously in a strictly private practice setting this may be difficult, but in hospitals, CMHC, and related settings may be a good place to collect some simple data and feedback from patients. I've found this particularly useful when running groups, as you can collect multiple data points and have a range of feedback.

Working with professional referrals can really show you where you fall, as professionals can be very protective of their patients, because if they give a bad referral it may cost THEM the patient's business.

Word of mouth is still going to make or break a person, unless they are the only game in town.
 
"...and not very effective."


i am unaware of any data supporting this idea.


"You state this as if it they are phenomena that occur at equal frequencies."


That is neither what I stated nor implied.


"How is that evaluated in a therapy domain, really? "


As you will note, I spoke from personal experience. I do not do therapy, so I am not exceptionally familiar with the best outcome measure of therapeutic response across disorders & settings.
 
I am unaware of any study that correlates the existence of the ABPN to the effectiveness of the ethics boards. Could you direct me towards this study?


I am also unaware of any study that demonstrates that the percentages of ABCN boarded individuals involved in neuropsychology have any relationship to the effectiveness of the ethics board. Could you point me towards this one as well?


My statements regarding schools and students are meant to be ambigious. Had I meant to state they occurred in equal frequency I would have written that.
 
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