Psychological Training in Assessment and Treatment of Persons with Serious Mental Illness

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Becoming Credentialed

American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP)

The American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP) offers credentialing in those areas that are approved specialties recognized by the American Psychological Association (APA). Upon receiving specialty recognition from the APA, the Specialty Council for Serious Mental Illness (SMI) Psychology petitioned the ABPP Board to include SMI Psychology among its speciality areas in which psychologists can become credentialed. This multi-year ABPP affiliation process is underway and psychologists working with, or on behalf of persons with SMI/SED, should visit the ABPP website for information about applying for board certification in SMI Psychology. (Site Link)

Continuing Education (CE)

For many years, beginning in 2004, the APA Task Force on SMI/SED has presented symposia at the annual APA convention, offered for CE credit. The Task Force has also sponsored several full day CE workshops and in 2010 began partnering with Division 18 of the APA and its Section on SMI/SED to present CE symposia and workshop offerings at the APA convention; psychologists attending the convention may wish to take advantage of these offerings.

Additionally, the Task Force partnered with the APA Office of Continuing Education to develop a webinar series on assessment and treatment for persons with SMI/SED. The webinar is a four-part series that is based on the content of the APA curriculum (discussed on the Training Materials page). The webinar was produced and made available on the APA CE website in 2016. Each part is one hour in length. The entire series or an individual part of the series may be taken for CE credit for a nominal fee. The series is available on the APA CE on-line portal and is listed under the category entitled Serious Mental Illness and Severe Emotional Disturbance - New Approaches (Link). As new findings emerge, updates to the series may also be incorporated. The titles from the APA CE webpage are: