American Psychological Association Deputy Chief of Public Policy and Engagement, Advocacy Directorate, Stefanie Reeves discusses mental health trends occurring in the 118th congress with Podcast Editor Jazlyn Gallego (MPM ’24). The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 146,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students.
“This is really going to be a time where we really are going to work with our coalition partners and addressing these big key issues and finding those champions on both sides of the aisle. As polarizing as we all see and hear about congress, there are those who are really working together. You don’t hear that story because it’s not as popular as people fighting. There are people working together to try and address these issues thinking about from the youth mental health perspective and the like. Were going to see those areas where it’s like when rubber meets the road, you’re going to have to work together.”
Stefanie Reeves
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Jazlyn Gallego: Hi. Welcome back to the Georgetown Public Policy Review Podcast. I’m joined here today with Stefanie Reeves with the American Psychological Association. She is the Deputy Chief of Public Policy and Engagement. Stefanie, Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.
Stefanie Reeves: Sure and thank you, Jazlyn, for inviting me to speak with you today. So, as mentioned, I am Deputy Chief of Public Policy and Engagement for APA. My role is managing our team who advocates on issues that more or less relates to psychology and the public interests and so psychology as it affects the general population. So, if you’re thinking about different issues from poverty, homelessness, gun violence, our team covers those issues in our advocacy efforts on the federal level.
Reeves: I returned to APA. I actually did a stint with APA back in early 2010 and afterwards was the Executive Director of the Maryland Psychological Association. I have always been in advocacy, particularly working at different associations in healthcare. I’m also sort of an association geek. I’m a proud member of the American Society of Association Executives having served on their board of directors and am currently a fellow for the association.
Reeves: I’m a native Washingtonian and when I say native I mean I was born in the city of Washington D.C. not Maryland not Virginia, even though Maryland is my home now. I am a middle child, older sister, younger brother. Proud Washingtonian, even though I’m now a Marylander! I am a pet parent to an eight year old Pomeranian Chihuahua terrier mix who hopefully will be quiet throughout this discussion but we shall see! That’s just a little bit about me.
Gallego: Thank you so much for sharing. I am a huge dog lover and am so excited to touch base about this Pomeranian in a later discussion but more seriously, thank you so much for your work on such important topics. As you touched on poverty, violence (gun violence) these are all very important issues, especially to our nation at this moment. You mentioned the American Psychological Association. It is the largest scientific and professional of psychologists in the U.S. and many are familiar with the APA but for those who are not, can you give us a little more background on what it is?
Reeves: Sure. So we are a membership association as you pointed out. We have over 140,000 members across the United States and actually across the world. And the majority of our members are psychologists but we also have student members. The psychologists are either clinicians, they are researchers, they work in academia, they are psychologists who might not be even currently practicing psychology. They work in a variety of different fields.
Reeves: Like many associations, APA provides continuing education through their annual conference and other workshops and conferences. They provide leadership opportunities. We have 52 divisions which are our special interest groups and again, they range from division that covers women’s issues, one that covers children’s and those who are psychologists with the ability to prescribe medication, those who are with the military, so we have a range of special interest groups for our members with a particular interest area. APA is located in Washington D.C. We have probably about 500 staff so we are a fairly large organization but if you think about psychology and the impact just in everyone’s daily life, it probably makes sense that we have such a large organization.
Gallego: Absolutely. The member program and the APA is incredibly robust. Many of our podcast listeners are students and academics. How would they become members and join these conferences and events?
Reeves: Our organization activities are not just open to APA members. Nonmembers are welcome to attend many of APAs programming from – sometimes we have webinars that are available to our conference. For those that might be interested in joining APA, we do have a full fledge membership department which can provide a lot more information and obviously information is on APA website on joining. Again, it’s really geared if you have an interest. If you are a teacher of psychology in a high school, there are programming and mentorship opportunities for you as well. There’s a variety of different ways for people to get involved with APA who have that invested interest in psychology but there’s also opportunities for those who may not currently be a psychologist but have an interest.
Gallego: Yes! Absolutely. I’m very excited for information on how to get involved to be shared through the GPPR podcast, especially since at the end you mentioned that those that might not even be explicitly interested in psychology might have some overlap. And so, that’s what really interests me the most is how this all comes together. Switching gears a little bit and beginning to talk about that topic, what role does psychology play in our everyday lives?
Reeves: Well, I think we can approach this from a couple of different ways. I will leave the mental health piece as a second part but if you think about again, your daily life and all the things that are included in society and as I mentioned, my team in particular, we look at those broad societal issues. If you think about homelessness, many of our members have done extensive research on homelessness and the aspects to it, the social economic factors that may be involved in someone becoming homeless and the support systems that are needed to be in place for those that may be homeless at the moment and how to transition them into stable housing for example. That’s one aspect to it.
Reeves: Thinking about gun violence, once again, we have done a lot of research in the area of gun violence in terms of the mechanics of it, who is most likely to versus who is most likely not to be a perpetrator of gun violence, how it impacts a community – not just from a mental health perspective but just even broadly. A lot of the research that we do, that our members do within our organization, those are the things that inform a lot of what happens in your daily life so that’s where we can make a contribution to society. The other aspect is obviously the mental health part. I think anyone who is listening to this knows and has heard that we are in a mental health crisis. We’ve been in a crisis probably a lot longer than I think people realize. I think it’s just magnified, particularly with the pandemic and all the racial reckoning and all the other things that have occurred over the last three years
Reeves: We still have stigma, but I think if there has been any benefit, its that people are now more willing and open to talk about mental health and so it is right there for us to look at and to experience. Again, we’re in crisis mode and so we work very hard to deal with that and many different aspects to it. It’s not something that we will see a resolution to sooner rather than later because of a number of different factors involved. Those are some of the ways in which psychology plays into our daily lives.
Gallego: Wow. Absolutely. Thank you so much. I was just reading an article yesterday where the APA was cited and had estimated this year that there were just 34 licensed psychologists for every 100,000 people in the U.S. and that is such a daunting statistic. And as you noted, we’re in a crisis and we need attention on this issue now more than ever and it sounds like there is a lot of opportunity for the general population to get involved especially as you noted that there is a lot of research crossover when we’re talking about psychology, we’re also talking about socioeconomics as well as demographic factors and other areas of research. That is very, very important to note. Are there any noticeable policy wins from this past year that you would like to update listeners on?
Reeves: Sure. We saw some really good things come out particularly from the omnibus but even beyond there. We worked hard on the gun violence bill that was passed out of congress and was signed by the president. We see it as a good start because there hasn’t been real gun legislation in a while. We see it as a start. We know that there’s a lot more that needs to be done and a bill doesn’t just automatically make the problems disappear, but it gets us on the road to that so, that’s one area that we have been active in and very proud of.
Reeves: I think the establishment of the dedicated line for mental health crisis and I think even the publicity around that because as I pointed out, you know, that stigma still exists and there are still people who are fairly uncomfortable with talking about mental health not just from a personal aspect but if you think about it from a workplace perspective, professional, what have you . . but knowing that there has been this broad promotion of this mental health crisis line, I think, is really the seed change that we have seen in the past year.
Reeves: I know we were talking about things that you have seen. I saw a commercial just yesterday with a member of the Baltimore Ravens football team talking about “if you need help, please contact this crisis center” and I don’t think you would have seen that probably even a year ago, maybe two years ago to see athletes talk about their not only their mental health struggle but also promoting opportunity for people to make a phone call to try to seek out health and support for that. Those are a couple of instances where we really saw some good policy wins on the legislative side as well as the regulatory side as far as mental health is concerned. Then there’s additional funding that came out of the omnibus bill that passed last December that provided some additional funding for maternal mental health for example . . one that helped researchers in the Veterans Affairs administration. . so many examples! There have been so many areas of progression where we have seen the allocation of resources to help us address this crisis that we’re in.
Gallego: That’s wonderful. It sounds like while were still working to create the access for mental healthcare that the activism and (use of) technology that were seeing can still work to eliminate that stigma and that is a huge win along with all of the activism that the American Psychological Association is really pushing for. That is wonderful and I’m very excited to see what all is going to continue to occur this coming year. On that note, are there some public policy trends in regards to mental health that you believe we will see in the 118th congress?
Reeves: We acknowledge that we saw some increases in funding and some new funding streams for addressing mental health, but I would be hesitant to say that anyone would say the work is done.
Gallego: Absolutely. The work always continues. I think that is very true for really whatever issue that you are advocating for in any type of activist work or any sort of advocacy, there is always some continuation of what happens because there is always a reaction to whatever policy has been recently implemented or other sorts of events that happened. There is always going to be a need to push for something else. I feel like an issue is more likely to evolve than be completely resolved.
Reeves: Sure. Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think one where we will continue to see emphasis placed is youth mental health. We saw it addressed in the State of the Union a few days ago. Again, we’re in crisis. It’s crisis across the board. We really are seeing it with youth mental health. One thing that we’ll continue to see in this 118th congress is a dedication to providing more resources, more re-opportunity, more opportunity for collaboration, more work to be done to address the particular concerns when it comes to mental health, particular youth mental health.
Reeves: Going back to the previous question about wins, one thing I do want to mention is that when we think about these issues, we think about them from a variety of different lenses but we really look at things from a health equity lens. One thing that we are particularly proud of that came out of last year that I think will have an impact is the Minority Fellowship Program. APA is a grantee of that program, and it basically helps to provide funding to help develop psychologists, social workers, and other mental health professionals from traditionally underrepresented groups and also look to provide funding for research that is usually centered around these underrepresented groups. There was an increase in funding for that and so the goal is hopefully to increase those numbers in the field as you pointed out the numbers of psychologists compared to just the population if you think about it from minority populations that number is even smaller. The Minority Fellowship Program is one way for us to angle and get at that. Looking at it from the lens of 118th, we know that this congress is going to be a little bit more interesting just with the dynamics that are in play but again we continue to look at and lead with the science. That’s one thing we say in our advocacy. We lead with the science and so we go by what the research says. The research says things that are very particular and very clear. That will help drive us as we go through and seek where we can find collaboration. I think that is going to be important and key.
Reeves: This is really going to be a time where we really are going to work with our coalition partners and addressing these big key issues and finding those champions on both sides of the aisle. Because mental health … As polarizing as we all see and hear about congress, there are those who are really working together. You don’t hear that story because it’s not as popular as people fighting. There are people working together to try and address these issues thinking about from the youth mental health perspective and the like. We’re going to see those areas where it’s like when rubber meets the road, you’re going to have to work together. We’re going to see some of that as we go forward. It’s going to probably be a little bit challenging getting to that point. The way it’s divided up, I think we can’t really move things forward unless there is some collaboration involved.
Gallego: Wow, Stefanie. I have a lot of thoughts to share with you just regarding that. I’m very glad that we got to touch on that factor of mental health access. When we think about providing mental health access, it is also important for us to ensure that the workforce is equitable, culturally competent, vast, and accessible. I love that you lifted up that piece. Additionally, as an intern with the APA, one of the first things that I learned was that there is a lot of bipartisan collaboration that I have seen regarding mental health and psychology. It has been much more so than I have seen for many other issues that have been so polarized and this alone keeps me incredibly hopeful for a better future.
Reeves: Yeah. The pendulum swing! I obviously won’t share my age, but I am old enough to remember where collaboration was the rule of the day and I think we’re going to start swinging back to that. It’s not going to be an abrupt swing back, but I think gradually were going to get ourselves back to where we NEED to work collaboratively to solve these big issues.
Gallego: That would be wonderful and that does give me a lot of hope to hear. How can we stay up to date with the APA?
Reeves: The best way is our website which is www.apa.org. That will give anyone interested information on what our big issue areas are, which there are a number of them! What we’re doing, how were addressing some of these larger societal issues, sometimes there are statements from our president addressing some of these concerns particularly because of the impact they have on our members so there’s some of those statements there. If you go to the website, you get to see sort of how the governance works in terms of our board of directors, as well as our counsel, and some of those divisions that I referenced. That’s one best way to do that. You know, just like every organization, you know, we’re on social media. There are newsletters and such to sign up for, but those are some of the easy ways to keep track of everything that’s going on with the APA.
Gallego: Wonderful. Thank you so much. I will definitely take a look through the newsletters and also check the APA out on social media as well to make sure that I am staying up to date and I hope that the other GPPR listeners are as well. Is there anything else that you have not discussed yet that you would like to share with us?
Reeves: Sure. So we talked a little bit about workforce. Some individuals have a certain view about those who will major in psychology but I can tell you, you know workforce is where we definitely need people in the field. . . we do. And again, that is across the board: psychologists, social work, psychiatrists, licensed professional counselors, and just again – you think about the fact that were in the phase now where the baby boomers are retiring out of the field and the numbers are just not going to hold in term of replacing those numbers. If you think about shortages in psychologists in rural areas, sometimes even urban areas.. it’s really key. So if you’re listening to this, you can be interested in public policy and psychology because again, they both go hand in hand. I actually have a degree in psychology. I did not intend to actually become a psychologist, I actually was gonna go to law school and then came and got into government relations and it just stuck. I love it. I’m actually a really good example of someone who majored in psychology and found their way into public policy. I would encourage people to get involved on that end.
Reeves: I think if you are also interested in pursuing psychology to get into the mental health field, don’t let anyone deter you from doing it because I can tell you, the *need* is there and the *need* is GREAT across the board no matter where you are. There is no area that has an overabundance of mental health professionals. NONE. Not even, if you think about – I’m in the state of Maryland and you think “oh Maryland, they should be flush because they’re near the DC area” – NO. Particularly in rural areas of Maryland, there is definitely a lack of.
Reeves: So, If you’re still considering what your major is and you’re leaning towards psychology but you’re not quite sure, I would say if you want to pursue it and mental health, go for it because the jobs are going to be there because the need is so great and when we talk about crisis mode, you know again, with people who are realizing and understanding and now comfortable with the idea of seeking out mental health services, those numbers are increasing which again is a wonderful thing. We want people to seek out help, but we don’t have the numbers to match that and that is only going to increase. Please consider a career in psychology but if not and you’re thinking about what you want to do and you want to meld the two: you have an interest in psychology, but you really like public policy, I’m proof that its viable. Jazlyn is working with us. I would probably say that it’s an amazing experience. There’s opportunities at these organizations but there’s opportunity at APA as well. I just wanted to put that plug out there.
Gallego: Absolutely. I’m certainly enjoying my experience at the APA as an intern. I love all things public policy and if you are a student looking for an internship, the APA is a wonderful place to intern. Thank you for some light on that. We definitely need more psychologists out here. What is the importance of advocating for psychology, now that we’re on that note, why do we need more advocacy? There’s obviously been a shortage of the workforce. Are there other issues that we also should be touching on before we wrap up.
Reeves: Sure. A common refrain that is always said in public policy and advocacy is “if you’re not on the table, you’re on the menu” and that is clear basically for every organization including psychology and psychologists and so it’s important that were in these discussions and again thinking about the larger societal issue that were dealing with, again, we have the research to inform whether its reproductive health, whether its gun violence, homelessness, social economic status, health equity, veterans issues, military, we can inform in those broad areas. The importance of us being on Capitol Hill, lobbying legislators, getting our members involved at the grassroots level, getting our members and our leadership particularly of legislators when it’s time to testify. Having that voice is so key and critical because I think, and I really credit, if we haven’t been able to be in those conversations, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve what we’ve been able to achieve so far as psychology goes. There’s still a lot of work for us to do. If we weren’t in those conversations and we didn’t help inform, we would probably be further behind as far as mental health goes in terms of funding, in terms of attention from legislators, we would be ignored. The advocacy piece is so key and critical for us, not just for those who are working on Capitol Hill but getting our members involved. We have 141,000 members buts that’s not even *all* of psychology in even the United States and around the world. So, we definitely benefit from strength in numbers. That is why it is so critical for us to be involved in these advocacy efforts.
Gallego: Absolutely. There is a lot to be said about these one-on-one conversations that we have with legislators whether it’s sharing your individual story or having the opportunity to educate someone. Thank you so much for your multifaceted work in psychology. I hope that everyone learned a bunch today. I always am so fascinated in how interwoven all of these public policy issues are in regarding public health, psychology, mental health, as well as you noted, socioeconomic issues combatting all sorts of violence and really creating a better world for us going forward. It’s truly so important that we seek areas of collaboration where we can further advocates.
Reeves: Well thank you so much Jazlyn. This has been a fantastic conversation and I hope that your listeners got something out of it and maybe even learned something about psychology.
Gallego: Absolutely. Thank you so much for being with us Stefanie.
More about Stefanie Reeves
American Psychological Association Stefanie Reeves FASAE, CAE is the Deputy Chief of Public Policy and Engagement with the American Psychological Association. In this role, she manages the team that advances psychological science on the federal level to increase access to mental health services, combat discrimination and promote health equity. Stefanie was previously the Executive Director of the Maryland Psychological Association. Stefanie has an MA in Government from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Psychology from George Washington University. A member of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), she was named a Fellow of the association in 2020, served on their Board from 2018 – 2021 and is a 2008-2009 DELP Scholar. A native Washingtonian, Stefanie lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Established in 1995, the Georgetown Public Policy Review is the McCourt School of Public Policy’s nonpartisan, graduate student-run publication. Our mission is to provide an outlet for innovative new thinkers and established policymakers to offer perspectives on the politics and policies that shape our nation and our world.
