Tag: American Psychological Association

MIA’s Justin Karter interviews humanistic-existential psychologist Kirk Schneider about how psychology can play a role in confronting the political, social, and climate crises facing humankind.

The American Psychological Association has proposed sweeping changes to training, focusing on the behavioral health model, which reduces the complexity of the human experience to observable behaviors.

MIA's Justin Karter interviews two leaders of the Task Force on Diagnostic Alternatives, a group of mental health professionals who have issued an open letter demanding a new look at psychiatric diagnosis.

From the American Psychological Association: "'Sexual assault is likely the most under-reported crime in the United States. About two-thirds of female sexual assault victims do...

From Buzzfeed News: "This month in San Francisco, the American Psychological Association will vote on a proposal that would return psychologists working for the...

The American Psychological Association has issued a letter to President Trump to express its strong opposition to the administration's new policy of separating immigrant...

APA President Jessica Henderson Daniel has released a statement on the recent school shooting in Florida emphasizing the lack of correlation between gun violence...

The American Psychological Association recently issued a guideline recommending only short-term, structured, and symptom-focused therapies for the treatment of PTSD; the guideline may be...

From Ravishly: The American Psychological Association has released a draft of their "Clinical Practice Guideline for the Behavioral Treatment of Obesity and Overweight in Children...

Using an invalid diagnostic tool flies in the face of professional ethical guidelines. The International Society for Ethical Psychology & Psychiatry has drafted an open letter to the APA and other professional organizations, publicizing concerns with the DSM's lack of validity and asking for ethical guidance. ISEPP is soliciting other groups to join us in this effort.

Steven Reisner and Stephen Soldz, writing for Counter Punch, take on those who have criticized the Hoffman Report, which found that the APA had actively colluded in the US Torture program. “They have not credibly refuted these core findings of Hoffman’s seven-month investigation, nor have they even attempted to do so.”

The president and president-elect of the American Psychological Association penned a letter to the New York Times calling on “Congress and other policy makers to address these factors with interventions supported by evidence rather than avoiding them by scapegoating the mentally ill.”

Former president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR), Roy Eidelson discusses efforts to undermine the Hoffman report which revealed the American Psychologica Association’s collusion in torture. "First, from a familiar playbook, we have the obligatory attack on the patriotism of Hoffman and those who have criticized psychologists’ participation in abusive detention and interrogation operations,” he writes. “The most outrageous example comes from two retired military officers, David Bolgiano and John Taylor. In a recent piece they described the Hoffman Report as a ‘classic attack of cowards’ and also stated, ‘By the publication and release of this report, the APA becomes a willing co-conspirator to the likes of al Qaeda and ISIS.’”

The American Psychological Association is hosting a two and half day interdisciplinary summit on November 3rd through 5th entitled Global Approaches to Integrated Care: Translating Science And Best Practices Into Patient-Centered Health Care Delivery. The summit features presentations and discussions on social determinants of health, demographics, culture and health disparities, and patients’ perspectives, among others. It can be livestreamed here.

On Tuesday morning, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of three former detainees against the psychologists who collaborated with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to oversee the torture program. According to the Intercept, psychologists James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen and their employees collected over $85 million dollars for designing and implementing techniques, based off of the work of Martin Seligman, that combatted torture-resistance techniques by creating a state of “learned helplessness.” There is, however, no evidence that these techniques gleaned any useful intelligence.

You never know what you’re going to accomplish when you start something. Who could have predicted that Tom Insel and NIMH would throw the APA and the DSM under the bus? My guess is that two factors played a big part in NIMH’s decision. First, the unceasing barrage of criticism directed at the DSM – its lack of construct validity; its declining inter-rater reliability – had damaged its credibility beyond repair. On top of that, thirty years of DSM-based research had produced no biomarkers.