Invasion of the body snatchers: Prescription privileges, professional schools, and the drive to create a new behavioral health profession.

Abstract

The effect and perhaps the purpose of the prescription privilege movement in psychology will be to create a new behavioral health profession under the name “psychology,” initially controlled by practice interests and by professional schools of psychology. It is a logical extension not of psychology per se but of certain trends within professional practice. A new behavioral health profession might be worthwhile, considered on its own terms, but ironically the very forces giving rise to it within psychology are pushing the movement down a path that could create a public health hazard and problems both for empirical clinical psychology and for the existing practice base.