The authors conclude that the PDP successfully achieved a primary objective for which it was established by demonstrating that licensed psychologists can be trained to provide safe, high-quality pharmacological care. As such, the project serves as a foundation for efforts to include prescription authority in state licensing laws and for the further development of a psychological model for prescribing. The Department of Defense (DoD) Psychopharmacology Demonstration Project (PDP) has been one of the most intensively studied and widely scrutinized experiments in the training of non-physicians for prescriptive authority. The result of Congressional action in 1988, the PDP training program was initiated in 1991 by the DoD as a demonstration project to train already

The progress of psychology toward the acquisition of prescriptive authority is critically reviewed. Advances made by other nonphysician health care professions toward expanding their scopes of practice to include prescriptive authority are compared with gains made by professional psychology. Societal trends affecting attitudes toward the use of psychotropic medications are reviewed, and the potential influence of such trends on the prescriptive authority movement is examined. A history of the prescriptive authority movement is documented, and recent legislative and policy initiatives are discussed.

The federal government has been the single most dominant force shaping the development of health professions over the past 50 years. Described as both a patron and proprietor of health professions education, the federal government's role is a factor that health professionals cannot ignore. This article focuses on the three major federal initiatives (Veterans Administration training programs, Title VII of the Public Health Service Act, and Medicare's Graduate Medical Education) which have most significantly influenced the training in and development of the disciplines of psychology and medicine. The significance for psychology's involvement in national health policy, particularly during this era of reform, is highlighted.

Involvement in the Department of Defense Psychopharmacology Demonstration Project (PDP) was a fascinating process for those psychologists immersed in the novel health science curriculum based in a traditional model of medical education. The PDP may be viewed as the compression of several years of medical school and residency training into a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship for practicing psychologists. In this article, 2 graduates describe the evolution of the PDP didactic curriculum, characterize the PDP paradigm, contrast it with a psychological model, provide comparisons with emerging civilian programs and the American Psychological Association's model curriculum, and highlight "lessons learned" during their 1st year in the PDP.The Department of Defense (DoD) Psychopharmacology Demonstration Project (PDP) is a training program unique in the country. Established by congressional mandate, the PDP provides psychology with an unprecedented opportunity to explore the feasibility of incorporating pharmacotherapy into psychological practice. Pursuant to the congressional directive to establish a program to train military psychologists to independently prescribe psychotropic medications, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs tasked the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army to implement the project. A multidisciplinary Blue Ribbon Panel and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology were engaged as consultants in curriculum development and evaluation. Incorporating this input with suggestions from the PDP fellows, the curriculum evolved into a novel health science curriculum. It was based on a fairly traditional model of medical education and taught within a military setting. Successive versions of the PDP curriculum have been reviewed elsewhere (Sammons & Brown, 1997), and evolution of the didactic curriculum will be DEBRA LINA DUNIVIN received her PhD in clinical psychology from St. John's University in 1981. After 11 years in independent practice and a Congressional Science Fellowship in the office of Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI), she entered the United States Army through direct accession into the Psychopharmacology Demonstration Project (PDP). Following graduation, she joined the staff of the Psychology Department at Eisenhower Army Medical Center, where she serves as a prescribing psychologist and faculty member for the psychology internship and psychiatry residency programs. ELAINE ORABONA received her PhD in clinical psychology from Nova University in 1988. She began a career in the United States Air Force (USAF) with an internship at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (AFB). After 7 years as an active duty USAF officer, she entered the PDP. She is currently chief of the

The use of psychologists to provide operational support to the military is not new. Much of applied psychology started with support of military operations in World War I and World War II (e.g., Britt & Morgan, 1946;Layman, 1943;McGuire, 1990;Melton, 1957). However, application of psychological expertise to support military commanders to attain strategic goals in a theater of war and facilitate intelligence operations requires a significant paradigm shift for many psychologists Williams, Picano, Roland, & Banks, 2006). Professional ethics is a central issue.Behavioral science consultation, as described in this chapter, is an area of practice that applies psychological science to interrogation and debriefing operations. Psychologists and other experts in behavioral science have consulted to law enforcement and intelligence agencies in both civilian and military settings for many years. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Naval Criminal Investigative Service, for example, use these subject matter experts both as individuals and in teams or behavioral science units.