Protecting our patients!!
Maintaining safe prescribing, highlighting potential harm from Chatbots, ensuring a safe process for mental health screening in schools and attention to the Governor’s proposed budget are priorities for psychiatrists across our commonwealth. Makesure your voices are heard- contact your senators listed in the article regarding the proposed legislation for psychologist prescribing!
As we have anticipated, Senator Gene Yaw has a draft for a state senate bill to be introduced to extend prescription privileges to psychologists. We hope that our members have reached out to their state senators to educate them about how wrong-headed such a measure would be, and will decline to co-sponsor or otherwise support it.
In particular, the members of the Senate Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure Committee are essential to be reached, as this committee will be where the initial debate will take place.
Republicans
- Pat Stefano, Chair
- Frank Farry, Vice Chair
- Kim Ward, Ex-officio
- Michele Brooks
- Rosemary Brown
- Lynda Schlegel Culver
- Chris Gebhard
- Dawn Keefer
- Kristin Phillips-Hill
Democrats
- Lisa Boscola, Minority Chair
- Marty Flynn
- Nick Pisciottano
- Steve Santarsiero
- Christine Tartaglione
If your senator is one of these, please contact them. And even if your senator is not among them, it is important to educate members of the senate about:
- Psychologists and psychiatrists are very different professions. Psychiatrists are physicians (graduated medical school) which teaches about human physiology and the actions of medications on the human body. Psychologists are trained in the psychological processes which affect human behavior, but nothing about the use of medications
- Pennsylvania has a shortage of providers of mental health services of all sorts, including psychologists. Waiting times to see psychologists are just as long as to see psychiatrists. Access to a prescription pad does nothing to address the real shortage.
- In the jurisdictions that have granted these privileges, over the past 30 years, fewer than 280 psychologists have obtained certification.In the entire country. It is disingenuous to think that any meaningful number will choose this in Pennsylvania.
- There are much better ways to address the access to care issue, such as developing robust collaborative care models between psychiatrists and primary care providers, without gambling on patient safety.
Other issues which our committee has discussed include:
Artificial intelligence: There are efforts in the state legislature to attempt to regulate the use of AI in the treatment of mental illness. We share the concern that Chatbots, in their current design, may cause harm to vulnerable individuals. Absolute bans on the use of AI in clinical settings may restrict our abilities to make use of this potentially valuable adjunctive tool; we will watch proposed legislation carefully (HB2100, SB1113, among others).
School Mental Health: Many efforts are underway to address concerns about the stresses of adolescence. One would develop mental health screening tools which would be instituted in all secondary schools (co-sponsorship memo by Aeron Abney). Another would mandate that students have access to “mental health days” as much as two days every two weeks (HB 1648.) While well intentioned, the details are problematic. We worry about the quality of the screening, will parental consent be required or assumed, how private will the findings be, and what will be done with the students who screen positive? Is taking additional time off from school really the best way to address a student who is struggling?
Gambling: PaPS and PSAM have collaborated on a position statement on the regulation of internet gaming. We have great concerns about the well documented impact on the citizens of the commonwealth, in particular young adult (and even younger) males. While the money that taxing gambling brings to the state’s coffers is valued, our duty as physicians is to educate legislators on the known harms to the general public..
Governor’s budget: Josh Shapiro’s proposed budget begins the process of determining state priorities over the next year. Important things for psychiatry is (again) proposing legalization (and taxation) of recreational cannabis use by adults, and regulating and taxing “skill games” (difficult to distinguish from slot machines). These two proposals are expected to help generate revenue, but at what cost remains to be seen. There are no major changes to funding for mental health; just holding things at current levels will be a challenge given the impending changes to the Medicaid system.