Health professionals, including psychologists, are now required by New Jersey law to be fingerprinted for a criminal background check before a license will be issued or renewed, but what concerns some people is the state’s demand that they also sign a statement that allows authorities to check a professional’s activities any time the state wants.
    A New Jersey psychologist, who asked not to be identified, said he is not disturbed by the fingerprinting but he is troubled by the section that forces him to sign away his right to privacy.
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    The National Alliance of Professional Psychology Providers (NAPPP) will meet March 4 in Washington, D.C., with 17 other national mental health and union associations to develop a strategy for increasing mental health’s share of the federal health care budget.
    “We want mental health to be an integral part of health care, not just the hind end, for a change,” said Nicholas Cummings, Ph.D., a founding member of NAPPP.
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    Chris E. Stout, Psy.D., writes that his Center for Global Initiatives was collaborating with the Flying Doctors of America in a pioneering and critical project in August. We were the first international group to be granted access to three Bolivian prisons.
    We were in La Paz to work at two women’s prisons, one of them a maximum security facility, and the infamous San Pedro Men’s Prison. (Read Marching Powder by Rusty Young to learn more about it.) In Bolivia, hundreds of children live with their parent(s) in these prisons. We provided care with a focus on general medicine, pediatrics and gynecology. I even did a psych consult! We treated over 600 men, women, children and guards in one week’s time.
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