1. What is the single greatest challenge or opportunity facing the discipline of psychology and how would you address it during your presidency?

The biggest problem APA faces is that it is losing members and not attracting enough early career psychologists. APA has lost 15,000 members since 2008 and new career professionals are not joining at the rate they once did. I would promote clinical practice guidelines and work to eliminate pseudo-science offerings from continuing education to bring scientists back into the organization. I also would give the vote to graduate students and high school psychology teachers. Psychology is a strong and vibrant science, but APA risks becoming irrelevant if it cannot get back to its scientific roots and attract its next generation.

2. How do you see APA's role in providing assistance toward addressing the opioid epidemic present in both urban and rural populations?

First, we can call upon our members’ expertise to inform advocacy on the policy level including but not limited to reimbursement changes and regulations about necessary services. In particular, we can highlight the feasibility of psychological approaches to pain management as alternatives to opioids. Second, we can work with other health disciplines including medicine, psychiatry, nursing and dentistry to issue a joint policy statement backed by a clinical practice guideline to improve education on pain and addiction in response to the opioid crisis. Third, we can emphasize clinical training in substance-use disorders in general and in opioid-use disorder in particular.

3. How do you think APA should address the scientific process of developing, updating and implementing APA clinical guidelines?

Clinical practice guidelines start with a systematic review of the empirical literature that is then channeled through a multidisciplinary guideline panel to generate recommendations that balance efficacy and safety. The recent PTSD guideline was hamstrung because we tried to save money by relying on an existing systematic review. Had we had input into its scoping, we would have differentiated between minimal treatment versus nonspecific controls and thus estimated the effects of generic treatment. This is something we can and should rectify in the next revision. Guidelines are not mandates; rather implementation involves clinical expertise channeled through client preference and proclivities.

4. According to its 2009 Vision Statement, APA aspires to be a "principal leader and global partner promoting psychological knowledge and methods to facilitate the resolution of personal, societal, and global challenges in diverse, multicultural and international contexts". How would your presidency further this vision?

Over the past decade, I have been fortunate to get involved with a remarkable group of researchers in global mental health and to contribute to projects in India, Indonesia, England and the Netherlands. These projects focused on the prevention and treatment of depression, but also succeeded in increasing employment and reducing domestic violence. We can tap into such networks to address larger societal and global challenges including opioid addiction and violence. We have made a good start by taking the Society for the Science of Clinical Psychology (SSCP) international and encouraging students and scientists from around the world to collaborate.

5. How will your presidential initiatives reflect APA's commitment to addressing social justice and human rights issues?

My initiatives will focus on collaborations across the disciplines (multidisciplinary clinical practice guidelines in particular), addressing the opioid crisis (I have only recently begun working through a graduate student to use virtual reality to ease cravings during withdrawal and to facilitate coping skills) and extending efforts at prevention and treatment on a truly global scale. Children, women and people of color are the most likely to be affected by social injustice and denial of human rights. These are issues that psychologists already know how to address. We have strategies that can be beneficial at both the individual and societal level.

6. What recommendations do you have for actively integrating science and practice into our discipline?

We made a good start when we decided to generate clinical practice guidelines. They serve the public interest and demonstrate our commitment to integrating New Institute of Medicine Standards (2011). We can rein in psychiatry if we make joint clinical practice guidelines but likely will have to renounce push for prescription authority to get them on board science and practice. If we are serious about generating guidelines, we will want to work with psychiatry and if we want psychiatry to work with us we will have to reconsider our push for prescription authority. No country relies so heavily on medications as the United States despite the fact that psychotherapy works better for most patients. Rather than compete with psychiatry on what they do best, we should get them to endorse what we do better.