A company called the “Prescribing Psychologists’ Register” has been around for many years, selling continuing education courses to psychologists looking to learn how to prescribe psychiatric prescription medications for mental disorders.
Psychologists who want prescription privileges claim a shortage of psychiatrists and note that given psychologists’ deep training in mental health problems, they are an appropriate, logical choice to help fill the need. And except for the lack of any medical training required by a Ph.D. or Psy.D. in psychology, the fact that the lack of psychiatrists mainly occurs in rural areas, and that there are other mental health professionals — such as physician assistants and psychiatric nurses — who already can help fill the prescribing gap, they may have a point. But as you can see, it’s a tenuous point at best that requires the suspension of most logic and best practices of care for patients.
Prescribing Psychologists’ Register isn’t an American Psychological Association (APA) approved sponsor of continuing education at this time. Therefore its continuing education courses aren’t recognized as being officially credentialed by the primary credentialing body of psychologists. But never mind, that’s not what caught my eye…
Here’s the copy from its website:
Prescribing Psychologists’ Register, Inc. The first and oldest training and credentialing organization for psychologists in psychopharmacology! PPR, following completion of its Series One through Seven Courses, in cooperation with the International College of Prescribing Psychologists, awards the Board Certified, Diplomate Fellow in Psychopharmacology (FPPR), the most stringent Diplomate in the profession of Psychology.
Really? The most stringent Diplomate? Hmm, that’s quite the claim there. So who is this “International College of Prescribing Psychologists?”
None other than the same people who run Prescribing Psychologists’ Register in Florida. You see, anyone can set up a company with the name “College” in it. It doesn’t have to be an actual educational institution (at least not in Florida). Although they changed their name a few years ago to the International College of Professional Psychology (branching out a bit?), they are apparently still in business and still filing annual reports with Florida’s Secretary of State.
Hundreds of professionals list this credential in their online biographies and resumes, including a president of a college, professors, a director of professional affairs for a state psychology association, and of course, members of a task force set up to make recommendations about prescription privileges for psychologists.
So who runs the company that sells the continuing education, and then provides the “diplomate” status from the “college” afterward? Florida licensed psychologist Samuel Feldman, whom we tried contacting for comment for this article but received no response. The principal address for the International College of Prescribing Psychologists is not a college at all, but Feldman’s home, according to Florida’s Secretary of State, Mapquest and Google Maps.
The Florida Secretary of State’s database is replete with many companies Feldman has set up with names like the “American Board of Integrated/Alternative Medicine,” “American Medical Specialties Board,” the “American College of Advanced Practice Psychologists,” “American Psychologist Physicians’ Register,” and this goodie, “Smoothy Child Pharmaceuticals.” He’s let most of the them lapse for failure to file an annual report (except that last one). Feldman isn’t listed as a current member of the APA, and he also appears to have started something called the American Journal Of Pharmacopsychology in 1998, but we could only find citations to it, not the actual journal itself.
This effort has been so successful, Feldman has had his “college” written into state legislation for standards for prescribing psychologists, such as this Senate bill in Missouri.
The problem isn’t that Feldman created a successful business (after all, there’s nothing illegal about what he’s doing). The problem is that there are many different board certification organizations, and then there’s the single granddaddy in medicine that offers board certification for physicians, the American Board of Medical Specialties. This is what most doctors are talking about when they say they are “board certified.”
Outside of this organization, there are many (dozens, apparently) of associations, companies and other organizations that offer their own version of “board certification.” These folks regularly award board certification and a “diplomate” in specific specialties in medicine, mental and behavioral health, but none of them are recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. An alternative organization, called the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA), also accredits organizations for board certification (but the International College of Professional Psychology isn’t one of them). The legitimacy of these other board certifications vary widely, and there’s no outside organization the evaluates them or lets professionals (or consumers) know which ones are legitimate, and which ones are not so much.
Which brings me back to the bad ones… It’s simply far too easy to set up your own board certification organization and selling Diplomates to anyone who meets your arbitrary criteria. Set up a “college,” a set of credentials in order to award the “certification,” and of course, a fee, and you’ve got yourself a nice business. Nobody will recognize that your organization isn’t quite legitimate until years later (if at all).
So I can’t help but wonder about the International College of Prescribing Psychologists. If this wasn’t an attempt at misdirection (at the very least), why wouldn’t the Prescribing Psychologists’ Register company itself simply award the Diplomate and board certification? Why set up a separate “college” to do it?
While I may be against prescription privileges for psychologists, I don’t think the practices described in this article does the field any favors.
12 comments
It is interesting to note that for all that Dr. Grohol implies that the International College of Prescribing Psychologists is not legit, he wouldn’t do the same if they were sponsors of his website. After all, Walden University, a sponsor of Dr. Grohol’s website, is not accredited by the APA either, “the primary credentialing body of psychologists,” as he puts it. It is also interesting to note that the APA isn’t accredited by the ICPP. The one thing that all certifying bodies have in common, whether the APA, the American Board of Medical Specialties(ABMS),or the ICPP, is that they are all formed by individuals who are in the business of making money for their organization. Take a look at the salaries of the executives of APA and ABMS. They charge lots of money to “certify” anything. I remember one organization, the American Psychotherapy Association, who also refer to themselves as the APA, granted diplomate status to a cat. Obviously this organization is not legit. However, when Dr. Grohol picks and chooses who he is going to endorse for being legit or not based on an agenda that he doesn’t agree with, he ends up unintentionally disparaging others, such as Walden University and their graduates. Sometimes it is better to be more thoughtful than opinionated.
I am sorry to add this, Dr Grohol, but from the above comment it does seem to legitimize my perspective you dismiss internet addiction as an issue, as it could impede your income from this site if you were to acknowlege it. When you look at the criticism from blog authors like Furious Seasons and The Carlat Report who repeatedly out clinicians who are tainted by their relationships with big pharma and other business first entities, a responsible reader has to ask what does Dr Grohol gain by having advertisements on a site that promotes health care interventions as much as criticize them.
Consistency is the hallmark of success, I advocate to patients and colleagues. I offer that to you to consider, even if you feel I am off base in this comment. After all, equally we are judged by the company we keep.
I do find your site more of value than conflictual, though. I just hope you practice some active clinical care to be able to legitimately provide opinions on mental health care interventions.
Have a nice rest of the weekend.
Skillsnotpills
Though your implication that ICPP is not a legitamate organization is clear your argument is fallacious. The organization has over 9000 members, the diplomates were all awarded after completion of a rigorous series of courses, and required written and oral tests. None of the Psychological specialties are accredited by the American Board of Medical Specialities as that organization simply does not apply to Psychologists. So stop with the sour grapes and return to arguments based upon science and logic, which yours is not.
Since when does quantity denote legitimacy? I’m sure many illegitimate organizations have members, too. The two are unrelated.
One of the primary differences between the American Board of Medical Specialities and organizations like ICPP is that the Board is non-profit and ICPP is not.
The ICPP is not up-front with its marketing, either. The ICPP, as I detailed above, created another “organization” — International College of Prescribing Psychologists (which is just the same person) — to make it appear these were two different organizations.
Legitimate organizations don’t go around creating a half-dozen different “organizations” under different names to make their other organizations look bigger or more legitimate than they are. I can only think of one reason a person would go to such trouble…
Yes, I’d say 9,000 suckers have been born. And someone is laughing all the way to the bank.
Thank you for the good info. As we have diploma mills, we also have other bogus entities. I hope this reaches all psychologists. It is important. Especially if they are going to pay for bogus credentials.
I recently read an entry on the listserv regarding Sam Feldman and the Prescribing Psychologists Register. The comment made was that most of the psychologists who are working towards prescription privileges are doing the MA alternative through schooling. I find this disappointing since I and many others started training in psychopharmacology and the medical sciences in the 1990’s without any immediate hope of gaining privilege, but for the sole purpose of being able to help those we are seeing. We all had seen the 15 minute med management sessions once every month that the psychiatrists were providing and realized that this was totally inappropriate in many cases. Dr. Sam Feldman and the PPR have made enormous gains for psychologists and for the people we serve. Long before the MA programs in psychopharmacology, Dr. Feldman and many others were working on establishing the groundwork and networking necessary for psychologists to prescribe. The PPR provided intensive workshops which were followed by written examinations. After years of training, ICPP and PPR developed and administered the very first National Examination for prescribing psychologists on UCLA campus which covered all necessary areas of medical sciences. The PPR and ICPP also established a preceptorship which many of us completed. Additionally, Dr. Feldman and others at the International College of Professional Psychology continued to work on finally obtaining recognition by the State of Florida with the programs being recognized as professional postdoctoral programs. Many of us have invested an enormous amount of time, energy, and money to make prescription privileges possible for psychologists. The contribution that we have been able to make in the treatment of our patients/clients via consulting with their physicians has been well received and appreciated. Many of us are looking at retirement within the next ten years, but have continued to fight for this for the benefit of our patients/clients despite the possibility that we may retire before we obtain this privilege. I know of several of the psychologists I have studied with who are already retired or within a few years of retirement. Despite this, we continue to complete the annual update seminars and have done so each year since our certifications. It should be remembered that many of the psychologists like myself who attended these trainings had already been in other trainings and graduate studies in various medical sciences and neuroscience. I hope that the psychological community, the State Board, the Academy of Medical Psychologists and the APA recognize and honor the contributions made and recognize the PPR/ICPP program as at least equivalent to the newly accepted MA programs and Academy diplomates.
Actually, ICPP is one of the only institutions authorized by the Florida Department of Health that allow a psychologist to bill him/herself as “Board Certified” in a specialty.
I would like to weigh in on Psychologists prescribing medications for their client/patients. I have been very distressed about this for many years. I was diagnosed with major depression and anxiety in 1997. I was additionally diagnosed with PTSD in 2005. I have been taking Wellbutrin and Clonzepam to treat these conditions. Here is California it seems psychiatrists do not do psychoanalysis. All they seem to do is what has been called “medication management”. They see patients for 15 minutes every two months or so on average. Psychologists (Ph.D.’s) see patients every week for 45 minutes on average. They are far more qualified to determine what medications their patienst need. Many people have stated that this demand on the part of organizations of Psychiatrists have forced these professionals to cease prescribing medications. This is clearly political and based in an interest in income and I would suggest the desire for power and control. I have had several psychiatrists make serious errors in prescribing medication for me. I have seen only two over the years that were outstanding physicians. I have observed many who in full view of patients go off to very expensive restaurants with drug company representatives. This is shameful and must be stopped but intead, like so many ills of American society, falls under the category of “business as usual”. This country, because of profound failures in ethics in addition to political and economic failures is on the downside of the bell curve and the way medication management is handled in this country is an example of why that is so. And, I will never go to a nurse who is “overseen” by a psychiatrist for management of medicatin. This situation is shameful and intolerable.
I have worked with various MDs, PAs and ANPs, and they have almost always taken my Rx recommendations. I have fd most non-psychiatrists to be lacking in Dx and Rx knowledge e.g. Give the mother a Rx for 5 mg Ritalin qam and come back in one month. In particular, an ANP that normally took my recos for ADHD, I found out years later that she thought all ADHD, Inattentive Types may have CPS (subtle seizure disorder) and she referred them for Ped Neuro evals. This shows a complete lack of medical competency. Most were lost to follow-up and their lives went down the drain. ADHD Inattentive type is the most frequent type of ADHD, so she was throwing away positive developmental outcomes in 2-6 % of the population bc she was too GD lazy to attend a workshop by Dr. Barkley, look at info at Medscape or pay for a journal sub. Resch shows that drug abuse can be reduced by 50% if teens w continued ADHD (about 70%) continued to be effectively Tx with stimulants. As per summaries in the ADHD Report in December 2013, long term Tx with stimulants appears to normalize brain structure and Fx vs. controls with ADHD and no long term effective stimulant Txs. Uncle SAM is waking around with a big hole in its’ pocket and the profiteers of the pipeline to JD to private prison industry are laughing all the way to the bank. As a PPR graduate I have come to appreciate the benefits of running lit reviews on new cases, rather than relying on what medical practitioners typically rely on, i.e., outdated incorrect assumptions passed on by outdated instructors. It took the British Royal Navy 200 years (after it was a known scientific fact by the Navy Officials) to implement a lime and a lemon for each sailor to prevent scurvy. The USA doesn’t appear to fare better.
Add’l thought, I have files for about 5000 ADHD Evals and I’m thinking about tracking down the parents and clients to ascertain outcome from Txs rendered by medical professionals. If any class action attorneys read this post, is there any possibility of a law suit for incompentent medical Tx?
Today I received an email from the Advanced College of Advanced Practice Psychotherapists, offering me board certification as a Fellow (FACAPP). For this prestigious honor, from [quoted from the email:] “the highest, prestigious psychotherapy designated Fellowship Credentialing Organization in the U.S.” all I had to do was send my CV, fill out a form, and send a check. But wait, there’s more! They were having a sale! The rate was discounted to half-off!
I must admit, my initial egotistical reaction was “Wow, that certificate will look great framed on my office wall! AND it’s only going to cost me $75!” As I reviewed the “rigorous” criteria for being designated a Fellow, the alarms began to sound in my logical mind. A CV and a check are basically all it takes, (my guess is that the CV is just a formality to provide some facade of legitimacy to this money-making scheme.) It took one quick Google search to find this article and I am thankful that John provided the insight to validate my “this is too good to be true” concern.
The ACAPP will not be receiving my $75, and I will continue to provide care to clients to the best of my ability as I have been trained through my accredited universities, and APA approved CEUs, (without a framed $75 paper next to my diplomas.)