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From Washington times December 28:
A lack of understanding of the system's complexities and pitfalls has kept lawmakers from acting on it until now, said Delegate Phillip A. Hamilton, an authority on mental health legislation. But the shootings fast-tracked the issue to the top of the agenda, he said."
"If no Virginia Tech parent or victim even contacted us or came forward, I think you're going to see some significant changes," said Mr. Hamilton, Newport News Republican.
The families are not uniform in their beliefs, however. Holly Sherman, whose daughter Leslie was killed in the shootings, understands that it may be healing for some of the families to lobby for changes to gun and mental health laws. But to her, the effort is futile.
Mrs. Sherman hopes others will focus on what she feels are common-sense measures: running public service announcements to educate parents about potentially dangerous behavior in their children, ensuring schools properly handle troubled students and holding surprise emergency drills at schools.
Someone needs to inform Ms. Sherman that the Virginia Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardations, and Substance Abuse is still completelyly ignoring people who are asking for help.
I have copies of emails in which help has been repeatedly requested from James Martinez, director of Mental Health in Virginia, but no help has been provided.
If you want to see the complete disorganized mess that mental health planning is in Virginia, look at their minutes on http://www.dmhmrsas.virginia.gov/MHPC/Minutes.htm.
Jo-Amrah McElroy has something to do with it. You can't figure out what from reading their pages.
Minutes are missing, inconsitently documented, completely in violation of Virginia law. No one cares. No mystery why there is a lack of accountability in Virginia Mental Health Services. It starts with gross disorganization at the top.
Parents of Virginia Tech victims need to understand that Jo-Amrah McElroy, James Martinez, and the rest of the crew in the Virginia Department of Mental Health have done nothing that would result in direct improvement of quality control or quality assurance at the New River Valley Communiy Services Board, which means people are no safer from attacks by people like Seung Hui Cho now than they were 8 months ago when the attack happened.I support a minimum standard for face-to-face contact between students and faculty in professional psychology training, as opposed to the briefer residency periods that occur in distance-learning programs. Sustained contact is essential for role modeling, socialization into the profession, and faculty assessment of students’ emotional stability and interpersonal competence. Given the nature of clinical psychology as a profession, competent and ethical practice depends on students receiving long-term observation, feedback, and interpersonal shaping from faculty mentors.
Another concern is the degree to which distance-learning programs establish oversight and quality assurance for practicum and internship experience. Such programs have hundreds of students dispersed geographically throughout the country. It seems unlikely that programs are able to establish meaningful relationships with all of these practicum sites in order to ensure quality training experiences for students, and receive reliable feedback on trainees’ acquisition of clinical skills. Likewise, APPIC statistics suggest very low internship match rates for distance education programs, and it appears that many students arrange informal, local internships. This practice raises significant questions regarding the quality of the capstone clinical training experience for such individuals. For example, they are unlikely to have an internship cohort or an organized didactic training experience, both of which are APA accreditation standards for internship.
Distance learning should not be the sole delivery method for the bulk of educational requirements for a doctoral degree in clinical psychology. This approach undermines an essential aspect of training, which is long-term, in-person mentoring in multiple contexts (clinical, research, teaching, etc.). Such mentoring requires extensive consideration and modification of one’s interpersonal style, biases, and effect on others, and should be a prerequisite for engaging in intervention in the lives of others. If we do not place enough value on this aspect of training for it to be a minimum requirement for licensure, then we begin to lessen the standards and rigor that are associated with doctoral-level training and the profession of clinical psychology.
I support this petition. As with other healthcare professions, the practice of psychology requires not only learning didactic material, but also having the interpersonal skills to use that knowledge with people whose mental illnesses or subjective distress may make them difficult. Developing the skills to work with patients requires mentoring over an extended period, not brief interactions several times during a year. Distance learning has a place, but so does mentoring, observing, and critiquing the work of psychology students over an extended period to assure that their interpersonal skills and knowledge are used effectively with patients. This is the job of the institution granting the degree. While placements where students work may provide some supervision, they have jobs that must be accomplished and time limits in which to complete them. This limits the time for supervision of actual interaction with patients and for developing skills through observation of mentors with extensive experience.