Hi
James M. Clark
Professor of Psychology
204-786-9757
204-774-4134 Fax
j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca
>>> "Lilienfeld, Scott O" <slil...@emory.edu> 11-Sep-11 7:36:26 AM >>>
But more and more, Boulder model programs are discouraging students with
primary career interests in clinical practice from applying for graduate
school, largely because dozens and dozens of Psy.D programs are already
available to do that (and there's no research evidence that Ph.D.s are
associated with superior therapy outcomes to Psy.D.s). Also, the costs of
graduate training at most clinical psychology programs are enormous (e.g., at
Emory, we fund offer guaranteed funding for 4 years, with full tuition
remissiion, about a $17,000 a year stipend, coverage of health insurance and
other fees; and our clinical program is not markedly atypical from other
clinical Ph.D. programs), and many graduate programs do not want to invest
>$100,000 and years of research training in a student who will go out and
perform full-time therapy, especially when there is no evidence (and pretty
good evidence to the contrary from meta-analyses) that their treatment outcomes
will be superior to those of B.A. level paraprofessionals (I have decidedly
mixed feelings about this argument, but take it for what it is).
JC
One potential downside to this division is that it would appear to give up on
the possibility that in the future psychological practice might have stronger
scientific foundations that require a deeper understanding of human behavior
and experience than can be transmitted in an undergraduate degree or even in a
PsyD (especially as currently constituted). It is hard to draw complete
parallels with other professions that do not have PhDs as the top professional
degree, but MDs do differ from Nurses, Dentists differ from Dental Hygenists,
and so on. Psychological practice based on an undergraduate degree would
appear to place psychology on par with Social Workers and Occupational
Therapists. And the shortcomings in the current versions of PsyDs, as alluded
to by Scott, means perhaps that PsyDs are not a lot better than undergraduate
degrees (my interpretation, not necessarily Scott's).
Another problem is that we relinquish training of practitioners to institutions
that are generally less completely scientific than university psychology
departments and that are probably outright anti-scientific in some cases. What
does that augur for the future interface between the Clinical Scientists and
Practitioners? To again draw an analogy with Medicine, would the results of
research in the medical field be less likely to be disseminated and adopted
widely if the researchers were not trained initially as practitioners? Indeed,
it even seems at least unusual to think of, for example, a Prostate Cancer
research centre that was not headed by a medical practitioner and that did not
also serve as a primary treatment centre.
Take care
Jim
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