Psychology's Dilemma
More college students are entering graduate school in psychology than ever before. More than 53,000 graduate students were enrolled in psychology programs in 1997 according to the National Science Foundation. This was a 10 percent increase over 1991. More clinical and counseling psychology practices are going out of business than ever before. How can these two things be happening at the same time? What career prospects do these graduate students have?
Psychology is a young science. The American Psychological Association (APA) is 108 years old this year. Psychology traces its roots back through other sciences to Descartes, but 19th century scientists such as Gustav Fechner and Wilhelm Wundt are often cited as being the first psychologists. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries psychology has been a "big tent" that included both clinicians and researchers. (These two groups of psychologists have not always gotten along, and number of research psychologists left APA in 1988 to form the American Psychological Society (APS).)
Much of psychology's growth after World War II consisted of psychologists who saw themselves as providers of mental health services. Graduate programs in clinical psychology and counseling psychology were developed to fill a perceived shortage of mental health professionals. Almost all of these programs were located in psychology departments of colleges and universities. The federal government provided funding to many graduate students through Public Health Service grants. The Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.) degree joined the traditional Ph.D., and emphasized practice rather than research. Internship training programs provided a year of full-time clinical training to complete the education of new psychologists.
By the 1970s health insurance had begun to cover the services of psychologists. Clients could often use their insurance to pay for most of the cost of their therapy sessions. Most clinical psychologists were happy to participate in this "third party payor" system. Few had any idea that managed care was on the way...
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