Special Interest Groups

Late Career Psychologists

The aging process creates a myriad of experiences and challenges - both personal and professional for the psychologist. We have spent our careers providing emotional support to others and it is increasingly important that we, as a professional organization, create mechanisms and provide opportunities to provide support to our members as we confront the emotional, physical, and cognitive changes of the aging process, associated illnesses, the retirement process, practice termination, and post-retirement adjustment.

Psychologists Practicing in Rural Pennsylvania

For psychologists practicing in rural Pennsylvania, we rarely get the chance to limit and fine-tune our work into a specialty. Our communities need generalists who can help address the emotional distress related to a host of real problems such as isolation, generational poverty and abuse, pervasive racial and gender stereotyping, toxic masculinity, fervent individualism, limited social services and healthcare, and limited internet access.

Outreach and Advocacy for International Students

The Pennsylvania Psychological Association of Graduate Students (PPAGS) is offering a SIG that will:
- Provide a free platform for international graduate or undergraduate students pursuing a degree in psychology in the United States that incorporates support, advocacy, and professional development
- Help international students get the answers they need
 - Discuss professionals and personal struggles as an international student (e.g. language barriers, reduced access to internship sites, etc.)

Contact Harsimran Wadhwa (hwadhwa@mail.immaculata.edu) for more information or with questions.

Clinical and Applied Behavior Analysis and Organizational Behavior Management

Psychology is a hub discipline with many spokes. One spoke is the behavior-analytic tradition of building assessment and intervention procedures based on operant and respondent conditioning, as well as the philosophical work of behavioral philosophies and theorists from Watson, Skinner, Quine, and Hayes.  This group will focus on the ever-growing legacy of behavior analysis  to psychology. We will cover areas including functional behavioral assessment, skills assessment, behavior analytic models of child development, behavior analytic cases conceptualization, curriculum assessment and design, and all three generations of behavior therapy, as well as the behavior model of supervision. We look at the impact of those procedures on individual behavior change, group and organizational behavior change. From early intervention to work with the elderly, this transition has had a considerable impact on services and service delivery. We also have an interest in behavioral models being reverse engineered for artificial intelligence, such as reinforcement learning. If you are inclined to think in a natural science approach to behavior, this might be the special interest group for you!

Questions? Contact founding member, Dr. Joe Cautilli (jcautilli2003@yahoo.com)

Information & Technology

As a hub discipline, psychology has had an enormous impact on the field of technology. In addition, the field of technology has had a growing impact on psychological practice (apps, EHR, etc.). This special interest group is for those interested in devices ranging from the development of the simple app to videos for training adults, to telehealth, to AI and wherever the future of information development may lead us.  Questions about meaningful presence in the therapy session will also be discussed and ideas generated as to how best progress with the issue and help carve out psychology's role in the technological future.

Questions? Contact founding member, Dr. Joe Cautilli ( jcautilli2003@yahoo.com)

Peer Grief Support

Any psychologist who works in a clinical setting loathes the idea of client death, especially via suicide. It is newly recognized as a mandated ethics area for each biennial and will significantly impact any clinician. Unfortunately, most psychologists will lose at least one client to suicide over the course of a career.

This SIG will meet monthly to offer support to grieving clinicians. The grief need not be only from client suicide, but other participants have joined with the death of a loved one or significant loss.

By offering peer support, we can help each other be more present with our clients. Our group may offer an outlet for clinicians to normalize their sadness and any frustration, anger or disappointment that arises in profound grief. Discussion of evidence-based suicide resources and exploration of clinical resources to utilize in our practices is welcomed.

The initial portion of each meeting will be for introductions, open discussion, and sharing; the remainder of the meeting will include a focused discussion topic proposed by the facilitator.

ECP Consultation & Peer Support

As Early Career Psychologists, especially given the isolation and high demand that many of us have faced during the pandemic, we are at a point in our careers where we need peer support, community engagement, and regular discussions around the trajectory of our profession, work-life balance, and building confidence in our new roles.

A PPA Special Interest Group for Early Career Psychologist (ECP) regularly would bring together practitioners and researchers to discuss: current roles for the ECP; unique needs within our stage of career development; stakeholders and in-roads to strengthening well-being and self-care; effective, evidence-based treatments; ethical dilemmas common to ECPs; telepsychology; and other topics.

The proposed SIG for Early Career Psychologists meets for one hour the first Monday of each month using an online format. The initial portion of each meeting will be for introductions, open discussion, and sharing; the remainder of the meeting will include a focused discussion topic proposed by the facilitator (e.g., ethical dilemmas, telepsychology, collaboration with medical community).

The founding member of this proposed SIG is Andrea Schachner, Psy.D. She can be reached at dr.andrea@schachnerassociates.com