The Competency Benchmarks document outlines core foundational and functional competencies in professional psychology across three levels of professional development: readiness for practicum, readiness for internship, and readiness for entry to practice. Within each level, the document lists the essential components that comprise the core competencies and behavioral indicators that provide operational descriptions of the essential elements. This document builds on previous initiatives within professional psychology related to defining and assessing competence. It is intended as a resource for those charged with training and assessing for competence.

The Competencies Conference: Future Directions in Education and Credentialing in Professional Psychology was organized around eight competency-focused work groups, as well as work groups on specialties and the assessment of competence. A diverse group of psychologists participated in this multisponsored conference. After describing the background and structure of the conference, this article reviews the common themes that surfaced across work groups, with attention paid to the identification, training, and assessment of competencies and competence. Recommendations to advance competency-based education, training, and credentialing in professional psychology are discussed. This is one of a series of articles published together in this issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology. Several other articles that resulted from the Competencies Conference will appear in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice and The Counseling Psychologist.

Objective: The authors investigated patient characteristics predictive of treatment response in the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Treatment of Depression Collaborative Research Program. Method: Two hundred thirty-nine outpatients with major depressive disorder according to the Research Diagnostic Criteria entered a 16-week multicenter clinical trial and were randomly assigned to interpersonal psychotherapy, cognitive-behavior therapy, imipramine with clinical management, or placebo with clinical management. Pretreatment sociodemographic features, diagnosis, course of illness, function, personality, and symptoms were studied to identify patient predictors of depression severity (measured with the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression) and complete response (measured with the Hamilton scale and the Beck Depression Inventory). Results: One hundred sixty-two patients completed the entire 16-week trial. Six patient characteristics, in addition to depression severity previously reported, predicted outcome across all treatments:social dysfunction, cognitive dysfunction, expectation of improvement, endogenous depression, double depression, and duration of current episode. Significant patient predictors of differential treatment outcome were identified. 1) Low social dysfunction predicted superior response to interpersonal psychotherapy. 2) Low cognitive dysfunction predicted superior response to cognitive-behavior therapy and to imipramine. 3) High work dysfunction predicted superior response to imipramine. 4) High depression severity and impairment of function predicted superior response to imipramine and to interpersonal psychotherapy. Conclusions: The results demonstrate the relevance of patient characteristics, including social, cognitive, and work function, for prediction of the outcome of major depressive disorder.They provide indirect evidence of treatment specificity by identifying characteristics responsive to different modalities, which may be of value in the selection of patients for alternative treatments.

A disinhibited temperament may underlie a behavioral impulsivity that contributes to elevated risk for future alcoholism, especially among FH+ males.

Abstinent alcoholics show a blunted stress cortisol response that may be a consequence of drinking or a preexisting risk marker. We tested cortisol responses to psychological stress in 186 18-30 year-old, healthy social drinkers having no personal history of alcohol or drug dependence, 91 of whom had one or two alcoholic parents (FH+) and 95 having no family alcoholism for two generations (FH-). We predicted that, similar to alcoholic patients, the FH+ would have reduced stress cortisol responses that would be partially determined by their temperament characteristics, specifically antisocial tendencies as measured by the California Psychological Inventory. On a stress day, subjects performed continuous simulated public speaking and mental arithmetic tasks for 45 min, and on a control day they sat and rested for the same time period. The FH+ who were low in sociability had smaller cortisol responses than FH-, high-sociability persons (t=2.27, p=.02). These two groups were not different in diurnal cortisol secretion patterns or affective responses to the stressors. Persons with a familial risk for alcoholism who have more antisocial tendencies may have altered central nervous system responses to emotionally relevant social challenges. Disrupted cortisol stress responses may serve as a risk marker for the development of substance use disorders.