Current Status and Future Prospects of Clinical Psychology

Toward a Scientifically Principled Approach to Mental and
Behavioral Health Care

Timothy B. Baker, Richard M. McFall, and Varda Shoham

Volume 9, Number 2
October 2009

Over the past 20 years, the prevalence of mental health disorders has nearly doubled in the United States. Yet despite the number of empirically supported treatments now available for a variety of disorders, most clinical psychologists and therapists elect not to use them or rely on out-of-date procedures. Some of these clinicians, coming out of training programs that did not use or teach these scientifically supported methods, may not even be aware of how effective such treatments can be.

For their part, many patients with mental health problems do not even seek help from psychologists; mental health treatment has become so expensive that many patients bypass this route completely, instead seeking out treatment from medical doctors who are covered by their insurance. There, the patients will, in all likelihood, just receive a prescription for a pharmaceutical, when they may actually get better results from a treatment program that incorporates behavioral therapy, managed by a clinical psychologist.

This major new PSPI report, “Current Status and Future Prospects of Clinical Psychology: Toward a Scientifically Principled Approach to Mental and Behavioral Health Care,” aims to address this state of affairs and achieve for the field of clinical psychology what the Flexner Report accomplished for medicine nearly a century ago. Distinguished clinical researchers Timothy Baker (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Richard McFall (Indiana University), and Varda Shoham (University of Arizona) document the urgent need for reforming clinical psychology training in order to ensure that mental health treatment rests on firm empirical foundations. Among their recommendations is a new accreditation system that will help regulate and standardize clinical psychology training programs. Training programs vetted by the new Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System (PCSAS) will emphasize high-quality, rigorous, and science-based training to ensure that mental health care consumers will consistently receive empirically-proven treatments. Patients and their families will be the direct beneficiaries of this new accreditation system, but the benefits will also extend to insurers and to the public’s welfare more generally.

Editorial: Connecting Clinical Practice to Scientific Progress
Walter Mischel
PDF Version (Available to the public)          HTML Version (Members Only)

Current Status and Future Prospects of Clinical Psychology
Toward a Scientifically Principled Approach to Mental and Behavioral Health Care
Timothy B. Baker, Richard M. McFall, and Varda Shoham
PDF Version (Available to the public)          HTML Version (Members Only)