Psychological Science in the
Public Interest(PSPI)
Volume 9, Number 2
PSPI is a journal of the Association for Psychological Science
Editorial: Connecting Clinical Practice to Scientific Progress
Walter Mischel
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
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
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now available for a variety of disorders, most clinical psychologists and therapists elect not to use them or rely on out-of-date procedures.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.
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.
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.