A recent article in the New York Times had the provocative title of  “If you could add one book to the high school curriculum, what would it be?”  The reporters (Concepcion de Leon, Lovia Gyarkye, and Tas Tobe) asked a number of well-known authors (whose works, I’m sad to say, I was largely unfamiliar with) to recommend a title. I was equally embarrassed to find that I had read only two of the books they recommended, even though one was by a psychologist: Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority. I guess I have a lot of summer reading to do, and here it’s already September.

National Register signed the Mental Health Liaison Group’s letter supporting this legislation which is a vital step in addressing our nation’s dire shortage of mental health professionals and reducing the unmet mental health treatment gap for Americans across the lifespan

I was quite taken by two cover articles in the 9 March 2018 issue of Science, succinctly titled “How Lies Spread.”  In the first of these, Lazer and colleagues (Lazer, D.M., Baum, M. A., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A. J., Greenhill, K. M., et al. [2018]. The science of fake news, Science, 359, 1094-1096) reminded readers that journalistic objectivity as a broad construct is a relatively recent phenomenon that came about largely as a reaction to the blatant use of propaganda in World War I. The authors made the obvious point that the ability to reach huge numbers of electronic readers via platforms like Twitter and Facebook have created a renaissance in propaganda and false information, often via the use of bots that manipulate algorithms to spread content appealing to a particular segment of the electorate.

The National Register of Health Service Psychologists is proud to announce that it has been named the recipient of the 2018 Early Career Psychologist Champion Award presented by the American Psychological Association’s Committee on Early Career Psychologists.

Technology continues to have a dramatic effect on the practice of psychology. For example, a virtual reality environment may provide access for those unable to attend in-person sessions. This might include those with physical limitations, remote locales, or those with severe mental distress, such as agoraphobia. Patients who are fearful of stigma, or who wish to avoid any disclosure that they are in therapy, might also appreciate this approach as technically it is not a person but an online avatar that interacts with the psychologist’s online avatar.

In recent days, national attention has been drawn to a new policy implemented this spring by the current administration that has resulted in the forcible separation of children from immigrant families. No one needs the opinion of a doctoral-level psychologist to understand that such separations are devastatingly cruel to the families involved. What policy makers are less likely to understand are the pernicious and often life-long effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). How will we as a profession respond?