The Historical Context for National Institute of Mental Health Support of American Psychological Association Training and Accreditation Efforts.

Abstract

The earliest relationship between the field of psychology and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) centered on the development and expansion of formal graduate training in clinical psychology following World War II (WWII). Because the NIMH did not obtain funding and was not formally established as one of the National Institutes of Health until April 1, 1949, psychologists first dealt with the NIMH's predecessor, the Mental Hygiene Division of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS). Thanks to a $31,000 PHS grant, the American Psychological Association (APA) was able to organize the now-renowned Conference on Graduate Education in Clinical Psychology, held in August 1949 in Boulder, Colorado. It is often claimed that professionalized clinical psychology emerged from this conference. From this conference, too, derives the dominant model of training in clinical psychology known as the scientist-practitioner, or Boulder, model of training, whereby clinicians are trained as both research scientists and service providers. The context for these developments was the rapid growth in the number of applied psychologists between the world wars. Since the beginning of the 20th century, various individual psychologists and professional psychological organizations had attempted to set guidelines for the training and education of clinical psychologists. In this chapter, the author focuses on the development of training models in the 1930s and 1940s and assess their impact on the development of the Boulder model. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)