TPA President-Elect Designate

Candidate Statements

Paul Andrews, PhD (Tyler)

One of the things I like about being involved in TPA is getting to know people who are interesting and enjoyable to work with. We have some wonderful people striving to do good things in our organization, and I have been delighted to be associated with this group.

My official involvement has included serving as director of the Forensic Practice Division and filling an unexpired term on the TPA Board. I have testified several times at TSBEP as well as at the Council on Sex Offender Treatment (CSOT) and before the Texas House Corrections Committee. I have served on a TPA task force working with TSBEP to update rules that left psychologists vulnerable to licensure complaints due to application of clinical rules to non-clinical settings.

As a psychologist treating juveniles with sexual behavior problems, I was involved along with many other people in attempting to push back the CSOT requirement for a second license to treat clients with sex offenses. While we were not able to get the licensure requirement set aside, we did significantly influence the CSOT rules so that psychologists can nevertheless provide other services to these clients. I point out these projects as examples of what psychologists can do—and must do if we want the right to practice our professional skills in the ways we are trained to do. Efforts to carve out areas requiring specialty certification or licenses need our ongoing attention and response.

Here are some things I will work for and ask your help with:

  1. Increased involvement within TPA, increased membership—We need commitments from a broader group of Texas psychologists. If you are reading these candidate statements, you are probably already involved. But we are a minority in our own profession. TPA is our strongest voice in Austin and across the state in dealing with professional issues. We must do more to work with local associations on common goals and to engage non-members. We need to give particular attention to incorporating young psychologists, graduate students, and new licenses into TPA.
  1. Give some service, make some friends—Being part of a highly trained profession brings privileges and also responsibilities. Many psychologists give graciously to a variety of efforts to better our communities and our society. We need to highlight these activities, enlist others to join in, and make friends for our profession. It’s about earning respect and building alliances but gaining friendships.
  1. Mentally ill defendants in our courts and jails need our expertise as do the systems that manage them. Drug courts, mental health courts, diversion programs, and alternatives to incarceration provide opportunities for us to collaborate with other professionals to get people into treatment settings rather than leaving them to repeat incarcerations due to low adherence to treatment. We need to cooperate with other mental health professionals and groups to advocate for these and other interventions that reduce criminal acts and incarceration of seriously mentally ill citizens. We must do better—we cannot build enough prisons.
  1. To help impaired members of our profession, we need to have an effective system of resources for responding to impaired psychologists. We can develop ways to identify colleagues at high risk and offer assistance before a licensure complaint or an act worthy of a complaint.

These are things I want to work toward. I would appreciate your help, support, and vote.

Rob Mehl, PhD (Rockwall)

After much thoughtful consideration, I have decided to place my name on the ballot as a candidate forTPA president. I began my private practice in 1981 in the Dallas area. Over the past 27 years, that practice has grown to include nine psychologists and two psychiatrists. I have also been a faculty member at Southwest Family Institute, and Clinical Adjunct faculty at SouthwesternMedicalSchool. During that time, I have seen many changes affecting the practice of psychology, including the advent of managed care and the significant decline in practice income.

Involvement in our professional associations has always been important. I chaired several different committees for the Dallas Psychological Association before becoming the president from 1988-1989. I then served as co-chair of the TPA Committee on Psychologists in Hospitals from 1990-1991 and also as the Federal Advocacy Coordinator. Following that, I served on the TPA board as the Liaison Officer for Public Affairs from 1992-1993. More recently, I served on the Psy-Pac board (now the Association for the Advancement of Psychology in Texas—AAPT) from 2005-2007, and became president of AAPT in 2007. Currently I am the Grassroots Coordinator for AAPT.

While serving as president of AAPT, the board undertook the task of developing a highly organized grassroots network which pairs a psychologist advocate with every single state legislator. This year I have continued as the Grassroots Coordinator, and I am extremely optimistic about the accomplishments that have already been made by our dedicated regional coordinators.I am committed to seeing this project through to completion.

One of the primary challenges for psychology is to promote awareness of the profession of psychology to the general public, including the legislature. Without this awareness, it will be impossible to adequately protect the profession, advance the profession or ultimately to ensure that the mental health needs of Texans are met. The grassroots campaign is an attempt to educate the legislature about who we are and what we do. We need to do this with the public in general, as well as with those who utilize mental health services.

I believe that we MUST protect the doctoral standard for psychology. We must clarify the distinctions among the mental health professions. It is important that the scope of our license be understood so that additional subspecialties are not carved out and licensed independently by the legislature (e.g. sexual perpetrators, family violence).

Psychologists should be permitted to practice in all areas for which they have been trained. We should be able to perform any mental health evaluation in any setting. We should be able to sign commitments. We should be able to practice in hospitals. While not every psychologist will wish to become a prescribing psychologist, those that elect to get the extra two years of training should certainly be permitted to prescribe.

TPA currently offers many resources to Texas psychologists—through the central office, the web site, the convention and other sources. However, at present the TPA office consists of only two staff members who do all this work. In order to allow TPA to further improve on its services and support, we need your help. By becoming a volunteer you can play a major role in making this happen. More members, individual involvement and an increase in volunteers will help TPA accomplish even more for its members. A strong effort can be made to increase TPA membership by reaching out to psychologists, academicians, early-career psychologists, and especially students.

If you elect me TPA president, we may not be able to achieve all of these goals, but we can make significant progress. I would appreciate your vote.