New England Psychologist
New England Psychologist is home to independent journalism focused on psychologists and psychotherapists in the New England region. We publish new content every month. Subscribe to our free monthly newsletter to receive updates, or sign-up for a one-year paid subscription now in order to access all of our great content.
Vermont considers mental health licensure reform
By Beth Negus Viveiros
New recommendations from Vermont’s Office of Professional Regulation’s (OPR) aim to streamline licensing for the state’s mental health professions. A new report from the OPR suggests expanding the scope of Vermont’s Board of Allied Mental Health (BAMH) to oversee all new mental health credentials and include all current advisor mental health professions, such as social work, alcohol & drug abuse counseling, applied behavior analysis, and psychoanalysis. In addition to creating a larger pool of licensed mental health providers for patients,… Read more »
Leading Stories
Vermont considers mental health licensure reform
Five Mass. cities designated as `sanctuaries,’ for transgender population
Medicare telehealth waiver extended again
Psychological first aid available following traumatic events
Study finds unequal reimbursement rates in CT’s mental healthcare
Advice given for treating immigrant population
Mental health disorders on the rise in pregnant, post-partum women
Campaign aims to de-stigmatize mental health issues among youth
A new champion in the world of trauma treatment
Report: Majority of mass violence not linked to mental health
Vermont survey: Student mental health is ‘not good’
RI agrees to consent decree for children with behavioral health disabilities
Medicare covers FDA approved mental health digital therapeutics
‘Intensive parenting’ beliefs negatively impact mothers’ mental health
Practical Practice
The doctor will ‘see’ you now. Or text, talk, or chat if you would rather
By Catherine Robertson Souter
Before 2020, telehealth therapy had barely infiltrated the profession, covering about 9-11% of all outpatient visits, according to the American Psychological Association (APA.) Then along came COVID-19 and everything changed. According to the APA, which began annual “pulse” surveys during the pandemic, the number of clinicians using telehealth with at least some patients grew from 33% in 2020 to 50% in 2021 and then to 88% in 2024. “The most recent APA survey data show that therapists are overwhelmingly using… Read more »
Training artificial intelligence therapists
By Ellen Anderson, Ph.D
This month, my electronic medical record platform introduced an artificial intelligence tool to improve documentation of progress notes. Naturally skeptical, I felt certain it would be clunky but tried it out immediately. The practitioner writes two or three sentences to summarize the session in addition to completing the mental status, risk assessment, intervention techniques, and symptoms. The algorithm integrates information from these sentences with the discrete fields of diagnosis, procedure code, mental status, intervention checklist, risk assessment, and treatment objectives.… Read more »
Older Practical Practice Columns...
Psychotherapy Business & Marketing
Learning to receive: The key to prosperity in business
By Liz Varney, LICSW
Many of you have read, or have at least heard of, the 2006 book entitled, “The Secret,” by Rhonda Bryne. The book was the wildly popular new age approach to manifesting the life you want. I watched Oprah Winfrey enthusiastically advocate for this approach, and I was swayed by her insistence that “The Secret” held the keys to financial success. I promptly read the book and then set myself up to create the abundance I so desperately needed. At the… Read more »
Disadvantages to telehealth as a business model
By Liz Varney, LICSW
In last month’s article, “Benefits of telehealth as a business model,” I shared the cost advantages to using telehealth to conduct psychotherapy instead of meeting in an office. I mentioned that it is important to include in your assessment of business “costs” how any business decision may tax your energy, time, work-life balance, and morale. While telehealth is more cost-effective than investing in an office space, it is not the answer for every business owner. Telehealth has some significant drawbacks… Read more »
Older Psychotherapy Business and Marketing articles...
Interview of the Month
Q&A: Machine learning, mathematical modeling used as tools to predict suicide ideation
By Catherine Robertson Souter
Modern psychology may be about to experience a sea change. While the practice has certainly evolved over the past 100 years, the introduction of machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence that uses large data sets to look at human behavior, may vastly alter the way mental illness is understood and treated. At Yale University, Shirley Wang, Ph.D., who joined the psychology department in July as an assistant professor, is using machine learning and mathematical modeling to attempt to predict… Read more »
Older Interviews...
In Person with Alan Bodnar, Ph.D.
The president and the poet
It had snowed heavily the night before, and the day dawned with a frigid wind and blinding sunlight that glinted off the blanket of white spread out in all directions where the shovelers had left it undisturbed. The area around the speaker’s platform and the stands had been cleared, but the reflected light from surrounding snow cover was intense. The poet, an old man of 86, approached the podium and began to read from the manuscript he carried. He wore… Read more »
Still hoping for the world we want
It was two in the morning when a chartered bus carrying 30 idealistic teenagers drove up to a hangar at New York’s Kennedy airport where a propeller-driven Iceland Airlines plane bound for Brussels was waiting just a short walk across the tarmac. Bathed in the glow of the airport lights, the plane looked like a shiny toy made real by some trick of the same fate that had brought me into this group bound for eight weeks in Europe. We… Read more »