Support the Washington State Prescribing Psychologist Bill: Expanding Access to Quality Healthcare

I actively support this bill.

We need this law to be passed because Deaf and Hard of Hearing people are having hard time to get prescriptions since Hearing doctors turned all of us down.

Finding a prescribing provider for deaf and hard of hearing individuals is extremely difficult. We need this law to pass to improve access to needed psychiatric care! Thank you!

This is so needed. Please consider this carefully. Thank you!

We are all humans first! All lives matter.

I’m strongly in favor for doctors like Dr. Jaime Wilson to be allowed to give prescriptions for the Deaf community

It's time for a change.

I fully support prescribing psychologists!

I strongly support this petition!

Fully support this!

I find it very convenient because those counselor, pyschologist, etc would have to wait for a family practice doctor to prescribe medicine. They could do it themselves since they have doctoraine degree in this field as well.

As a private practice clinician, having a 17yo at old on an 8 month waitlist when they are in medicated and diagnosed with Bipolar is resicilous and is reckless for the state of Washington to ignore this crisis when there are options out there that can be effective while maintained a safe community.

I am a family nurse practitioner, soon to be dual certified as a PMHNP. With the incredible dearth of mental healthcare providers in our state, we are in a crisis. Qualified psychologists having the ability to prescribe will be a boon to the patient population. Having worked in emergency medicine, I’ve seen the unfortunate result of patients, not receiving proper mental healthcare in the community. There are many patients without access to care, for lack of providers. Crises are precipitated, that could be easily prevented had they a provider to manage their care. I wholeheartedly support this initiative.

This provides greater access to quality, integrated care during a crisis of insufficient behavioral health providers.

I am writing to ask you to support the bill will the bill in your state that will allow appropriately trained psychologist to prescribe prescription medications. As one who has been familiar with this issue for nearly thirty years, this is a bill that deserves support from both yourself and other legislators because it sees to the behavioral healthcare of the citizens in your state. Since 1996 the American Psychological Association has set forth training standards that requires at least two years of graduate semester quality coursework specific to psychopharmacology. Yet, in its absence in 1994 I wrote a very controversial article entitled Psychopharmacology: Psychology’s Jurassic Park? This article articulated numerous concerns about psychologists receiving prescription privileges, and each concern has been dealt with in the years since - most potently with the curriculum developed in 1996. Thus, I came around as a scientist-practitioner from the standpoint of opposing these privileges, to supporting these privileges, based on the facts, the science, and the proven safety of psychologists prescribing. This two-year curriculum has been reviewed and revised several times since 1996. Over this time, a national examination has been developed that after considerable review is now a well-recognized, well-researched, benchmark to demonstrate competence in the specific area of psychologists making use of psychopharmacology. There is a recognized threshold within the field for a practicum of not simply seeing 100 patients, but following 100 patients through a course of treatment under the supervision of a physician. Then, based on successful legislation in other states and standards from the Armed Services there is an accepted licensing process to use as a model. There is a behavioral healthcare crisis in many states, where for example here in Montana on average one person dies every other day from a completed suicide. We have been first or second, per capi

Passing RxP legislation for the people of Washington is clearly the right thing to do. Already citizens of other states and beneficiaries of DOD & Federal Government benefit from the access to care provided by appropriately trained doctoral psychologists who can not only prescribe medication to assist with treatment of behavioral health problems, they also can provide non-medication treatment to ensure optimal recovery and return to better health. Furthermore, psychologists trained in psychopharmacology often un-prescribe medication that is not needed as they are trained to provide both medication and non-medication treatments.

TX

I fully support this

Please pass this bill.

Support