Re-Envisioning

Division 29
Embracing Diversity,
Globalization, and “Being
Connected” Through Technology
Who We Were

 Primarily a membership-based
group of Psychologists
committed to advancing and
preserving psychotherapy as an
art and science
 Mostly over 50 years of age,
Caucasian, and male
What We Liked
 Attending conferences
 Reading journals & books
 Relating to others like ourselves
 Passing on traditions of psychotherapy
 Addressing obstacles to our work
 Teaching, training, researching, publishing
 Being a member of an elite group
The Trend and
Challenge
 Membership has been dwindling every year and
over the last decade has reduced approximately
50% similar to trends in other divisions
 Many of today’s psychotherapists do not find as
much appeal belonging to professional societies
and organizations
 Our source of revenue is shifting from
membership to publications
 Newer social structures are emerging based on
technology
Practice Directorate’s
Survey of 3,000
Practitioners
 61.9% work in independent practice
 29.9% work in institutional practice
 8.2% work in academic settings
 78% work in either full or part-time
practice
 92% provide individual
psychotherapy!
Psychotherapy is
Robust and Widely
Embraced
 Research has shown psychotherapy
effective
 Pharmaceutical companies spend
millions of dollars marketing vs.
limited funding for psychotherapy
 Many people prefer psychotherapy
over medication management but
don’t always have access to high
quality care
A Paradigmatic Shift is
Occurring
 New social systems based on
technology are emerging
 “Being connected” may be enhanced
by technology
 The “world is flat” and information
can be accessed anywhere in the
world that is connected to the web
What Do We See When
We Envision Our
Future?
Some Trends to
Consider
Creating a Tipping
Point
 Informatics
 How Public Perception Shapes Science
and Practice
 Revolution in Technology
 Inter-disciplinarity, unification, and
dissolution of boundaries
From Seed: Science is Culture Magazine 2008
Informatics— The sciences
concerned with gathering,
storing, retrieving, and
classifying information
How Informatics Advances
Psychotherapy

Informatics supports decision-making:

 Psychotherapists have to deal with
vast amounts of information and pick
the most promising elements
 Psychotherapists need powerful tools
to reveal patterns, trends, and outliers
from multiple sources of evidence
Public Perception Shapes
Science & Practice

 Psychologist-psychotherapists need to
know how to present to the public and share
our knowledge in meaningful ways to
improve mental health and enhance society
 The internet has become one of the main
vehicles for marketing our specialized
knowledge
How many of you have been Googled before the

patient scheduled an appointment?

Revolution in Digital
Publishing
 Digital publishing—“more profound than
the printing press”
 Open access publishing—rapid
availability may do away with paper
 Creating freely available information on
the internet e.g., Wikipedia
 Introduce psychotherapedia
Technology is Changing
the Social and Global
Landscape
 The computer/internet and rapid
technological advances have
fundamentally changed who we are as
social, information-gathering individuals
 We have moved from hunter-gatherers, to
farmers, to industrialists, and now to
information generators-gatherers
What is the
Prescription?

Capitalize on
these Trends to
Meet the Needs of
Current and
Future
Psychotherapists
of the World
Moving From
Contemplation to Action
Inspire Our Field—
Present our Knowledge &
Introduce our Leaders
 Enhance emphasis on using informatics
and advance technology
 Introduce Unified Psychotherapy Project
and Psychotherapedia
 Create a mechanism to do pro-bono work by
providing list of organizations we endorse
 Establish task force to strengthen the value
of the psychologist-psychotherapist
CREATING A GLOBAL COMMUNITY OF
PSYCHOTHERAPISTS
Use Internet as Portal
to Advance
Psychotherapy
 Offer the best available and most current
information about the science and practice of
psychotherapy
 Make it easy to view all educational programs
and attain CEs from anywhere on the globe
 Create a compelling site that is user friendly and
attracts users because of content
What Can We Do?
 Re-envision ourselves based on needs of
psychotherapists and public
 Be responsive to current trends
 Anticipate future trends
 Capitalize on trends to advance our mission
 Use the tools (technology, informatics, marketing)
available to us to make us the portal to information
about the science and practice of psychotherapy
Speak and Capture Our
Audience with High Quality
Interactive Information
 Offer cafés that are for members only where
they can join a video-conference using
webcams from their offices
 Create blogs on a variety of topics by
leaders in our field
 Have an ongoing video feature where some
of us interview various individuals in the
field and make their personal-professional
story come to life
Capitalize on our
Specialized Knowledge as
our Source for Generating
Funds
 Offer various levels of participation for
access to our information through our
internet portal
 Provide a basic free access zone to
interested parties to increase traffic on
our site
 Offer electronic journals that make it
easy for people to access information
Strengthen
Psychotherapy by
Increasing our
Collaboration
 Continue to work closely with Society for
Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI), Society for
Psychotherapy Research (SPR) and other high
level scientific and practice based groups.
Have links to their sites, after they are
approved, so that we can enhance
collaboration
 Create links on our site to approved non-profit
organizations which provide pro-bono services
for mental health
Strengthen Scientific
Resources
 Create on-line research-clinician
collaborative programs
 Offer downloadable empirical
measures to monitor psychotherapy
and accumulate large cohorts of data
available to researchers
 Link to psychotherapedia
Brainstorm, Dream,
and Envision Our
Future
I Want to Hear Your
Vision for the Division

Thank You!
Jeffrey J. Magnavita
MagnaPsych@aol.com