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Sent 1: Critics say that is not nearly enough compared with other prescribers, such as M.D. psychiatrists or nurse practitioners who have at least six years' medical education and clinical experience.
Sent 2: Neither Davison nor most other RxP opponents doubt the efficacy of medications.
Sent 3: Their greatest objection is to the notion of turning psychology into a prescribing profession.
Sent 4: In a field that has struggled long and hard to prove that mind, mood and behavior can be studied empirically, the past decade, Davison says, has seen "exciting developments" that demonstrate the validity of various psychotherapeutic interventions and the psychosocial-behavioral models on which they are based.
Sent 5: "The timing is peculiar to abandon psychological science or to convert it to a medical science," explains Elaine M. Heiby of the University of Hawaii, who chairs a committee of the 1,000-member American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology that is concerned about the medicalization of psychology.
Sent 6: "Making sure that practicing psychologists are giving patients interventions based on the best available psychological science should be the APA's priority," argues Emory University's Scott Lilienfeld, president of the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology (SSCP).
Sent 7: More than any philosophical betrayal of psychology, RxP opponents fear that the movement will undermine the science they love.
Sent 8: They believe that if prescriptive authority becomes the norm, biomedical requirements will inevitably seep into the psychology curriculum, at the expense of traditional psychological science and methodology.
Sent 9: Lilienfeld feels that many clinical psychologists already receive inadequate training in fundamentals such as research design and evaluation.
Sent 10: RxP opponents charge the APA with pushing its prescription-privileges agenda without adequately assessing support for it in the field.
Sent 11: The 300-member SSCP is the only group within the APA to have taken a formal stance against prescription privileges.
Sent 12: The APA has scheduled 30 minutes at its meeting in August for an RxP debate, but its leadership believes it already has an accurate sense of support for its RxP policy.
Sent 13: "Except for this small vocal minority, we have just not gotten a lot of groundswell against this from members," says APA president Philip G. Zimbardo of Stanford University.
Sent 14: With prescription privileges now a reality in one state, some RxP opponents concede that it may be too late.
Sent 15: This year four states besides New Mexico -- Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois and Tennessee -- have pending legislation for psychologist prescription privileges.
Sent 16: Over the past decade, 14 state legislatures have considered such laws.
Sent 17: Between 1991 and 1997, a U.S. Department of Defense psychopharmacology demonstration project involving two to four years' training produced 10 military psychologists who can write prescriptions.