2023

• Joan Sarnat previously donated $50,000 to fund the position of Executive Director, enabling PsiAN to make our very first hire. We’re deeply honored and incredibly grateful that she has recently renewed that support with another grant. Joan’s donation is a meaningful vote of confidence in PsiAN’s mission, vision and leadership, and her generosity and vision were instrumental in helping to take PsiAN to the next level.

• HIPS Film Screening: PsiAN hosts free film screening of the documentary Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness, executive-produced by Ken Burns and co-directed by Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers. Panelists include filmmaker Erik Ewers, Amy Kennedy, Linda Michaels, and several youth featured in the film.

• As always, PsiAN is focused on changing the narrative about psychotherapy in the media. For the very first time, we were featured in the Wall Street Journal when they ran a letter to the editor by our own Linda Michaels. Her letter was in response to an article that raised concerns about new screening guidelines for anxiety. The letter, included below, is a timely reminder that any discussion of mental health symptoms is incomplete if it fails to mention the role of psychotherapy:

  
  “The essay ignores psychotherapy and the importance of understanding the meaning and underlying causes of anxiety, depression, sleeplessness or lack of appetite. While psychiatric medications can be lifesaving and very useful, we need to differentiate when someone requires psychiatric medication from when he or she needs psychotherapy. Yes, it is time-intensive, but it’s highly effective and evidence-based. Demand outstrips supply when it comes to mental-health professionals. We need to increase the numbers of those professionals and pay them market rates, rather than institute superficial screenings that will only create more demand and crowd out those who do need professional mental-health care.” 

• PsiAN has released our first book! Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Humanizing Mental Health Policy and Practice brings together a global community of mental health professionals to offer an impassioned defence of relationship-based depth psychotherapy. With a distinguished international group of authors and a clear focus on determining a future direction for psychotherapy, this book is essential reading for all psychotherapists. Click here to learn more!

• Starting in 2022, PsiAN took on the issues of app companies, including BetterHelp and CareDash, in several ways. BetterHelp was advertising heavily, and CareDash used a number of deceptive practices and functioned as an advertising vehicle for BetterHelp. PsiAN created an email template and position paper on apps/technology and encouraged members to write to companies, such as NPR, that feature advertisements for BetterHelp. We also launched a petition to the FTC and Attorneys General against CareDash. Shortly after our petition, and efforts from other organizations, BetterHelp announced it would stop its advertising relationship with CareDash. Then, in 2023, CareDash closed down and dissolved its business. Separately, BetterHelp was cited and fined by the FTC for sharing customer data for advertising purposes, after promising to keep such data private.

Growth

• Eric Plakun joins PsiAN as an Advisor! Eric is the Medical Director/CEO of the Austen Riggs Center, and former Harvard Medical School clinical faculty member. He is the editor of 2 books, including Treatment Resistance and Patient Authority: The Austen Riggs Reader (Norton, 2011), author of close to a hundred published papers and book chapters, and has presented many scientific papers. Dr. Plakun is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and an elected member of its Board of Trustees. He is past chair of the APA Committee on Psychotherapy by Psychiatrists, APA Bylaws Committee, and past leader and founder of its Psychotherapy Caucus. He is a past member of the APA Assembly Executive Committee, and past chair of the Assembly Committee of Representatives of Subspecialties and Sections. Dr. Plakun served as plaintiffs’ expert on adult mental disorders in the landmark case of Wit versus United Behavioral Health/Optum. He has been honored as the Outstanding Psychiatrist in Clinical Psychiatry by the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society. Dr. Plakun is a leader in organized psychiatry and psychoanalysis, an advocate for the value of psychotherapy and other psychosocial treatments, and an advocate for access to care.

2022

GROWTH

• Amy Kennedy joins PsiAN as an Advisor! Amy brings a wealth of experience on mental health, advocacy and especially the needs of children and families. Amy is the Education Director of The Kennedy Forum where she pursues partnerships and collaborations that emphasize evidence-based research and programming to facilitate policy change in the areas of education and mental health. Last year, Amy ran for Congress in New Jersey’s 2nd congressional district. With over 15 years of experience working in public schools, Amy has seen first-hand how a child’s mental health and mental health literacy impacts their ability to learn and grow—not only in the classroom, but in life. Amy serves on the boards of Mental Health America, a leading national advocacy organization and Parity.org, which promotes gender parity at the highest levels of business. She is an advisory board member of Interaxon, a mental health technology company; the JED Foundation which focuses on mental wellness and emotional preparedness for teens; and Brain Futures. Amy and her husband, former Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, live in southern New Jersey with their five children.

• We launched our Board of Directors, with an inspiring and diverse group of individuals dedicated to PsiAN’s mission.

• Kimberlyn Leary joins PsiAN as an Advisor! Kimberlyn Leary is a senior vice president, managing research and program development across the Urban Institute. She comes to Urban from Harvard University, where she is an associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, an associate professor in the department of health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. For four years, she directed the Enabling Change program for the Doctor of Public Health program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Leary also served as executive director of policy outreach and of the Center of Excellence in Women’s Mental Health at McLean Hospital. Before that, she was chief psychologist at the Cambridge Health Alliance for nearly 12 years.

• PsiAN and ROOM are pleased to announce our partnership as non-profit, grassroots organizations dedicated to transformation and change through a greater appreciation of psychoanalysis and therapies of depth, insight, and relationship. PsiAN strives for a world in which psychotherapies of depth, insight, and relationship are universally available to those in need, and works to educate and advocate for these therapies to the public, our professions, and policymakers. ROOM is an award-winning interdisciplinary magazine conceived as an agent of community building and transformation, combining a collaborative and participatory “social turn” art practice with a psychoanalytic understanding of how change occurs.

• And, we are very proud and grateful to our members and supporters around the world for raising $85,000 during our annual fundraising appeal. We started with an ambitious goal of $50,000, and are awed to have exceeded that by 70%!

EDUCATION

• The hit HBO show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, took on the thorny and complex issues of mental healthcare. From apps posing as therapy, to insurance companies' ghost networks, to lack of real parity, to a systemic focus on crisis management as opposed to healing and recovery, Oliver makes smart, insightful, cogent points - and many a good joke. To create the show, Oliver’s producers interviewed our Chair and Co-Founder, Linda Michaels, two of our Advisors, Meiram Bendat and Hannah Zeavin, and our friend at the Kennedy Forum, David Lloyd. 

  Last Week Tonight - Mental Health - 7.31.22 show. 

• PsiAN Co-Founders Linda Michaels and Janice Muhr, and co-leader of the Community Collaboratory @ PsiAN, Jane Hassinger, presented at an Invited Panel at the SPPP/Division 39 Annual Meeting. Their topic was Advocating for Therapies of Depth, Insight and Relationship.

PUBLICATIONS

• What People Need and Want from Therapy: Advancing Access to Quality Care, a new article by Linda Michaels bringing our market research to a general audience, highlighting key results that support therapies of depth, insight and relationship, such as 68% of people want to get to the root of their issues. She explains how apps and other approaches, like manualized therapy, lack a strong evidence base and result mainly in relapse - not sustained benefit. Linda also outlines what makes for effective therapy, and how the insurance industry, venture capital and a consumerist focus are all barriers to real access and quality care.. 

• Our position paper on mental health apps and technology, where the promises as well as the perils are clearly delineated. We also published a companion tool – email templates to alert companies that accept advertising dollars from these apps

• Guide to Choosing a Medicare Plan, outlining concerns with Medicare Advantage, plus an overview of the history of Medicare and its privatization over time

• Insurance / Parity Toolkit, for therapists and patients to equip themselves to handle insurance appeals, push back on denials and parity violations

• PsiAN publishes its first journal, Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Rehumanizing Mental Health Policy and Practice. We are so grateful to our contributors -- Nancy McWilliams, Farhad Dalal, Enrico Gnaulati, Santiago Delboy, Linda Michaels, Susan G. Lazar, Oksana Yakuskho, Thor Cornelius -- and our editor Tom Wooldridge. PsiAN Co-Chairs Janice Muhr, Linda Michaels and Nancy Burke also wrote an introduction and epilogue, framing the journal articles. Our contributors write about the problems with diagnostic systems, the power of relational healing, the cost-effectiveness of depth treatments, and much more, including our original research with the general public on what they want from therapy. You can read PsiAN’s original research, Going Beneath the Surface: What People Want from Therapy, and if you'd like full text access to any of the other articles, just drop us a line at hello@psian.org.

GIFTS

• The Robert & Virginia Shiller Foundation awarded PsiAN a $35,000 grant! They have funded us in the past, and not only have they made a repeat gift, but they have more than tripled their grant! They trust us to use these funds in the way we deem most important, and we are extremely grateful.

2021

GROWTH

• Added Cheryll Rothery and William S. Meyer to our Advisory Board

• Started the William S. Meyer Book Club

• 80 Strategic Partner organizations

ADVOCACY

• PsiAN joined the Kennedy Forum Illinois, Inseparable, and other organizations to support the successful Health is Health Illinois campaign, which is focused on ensuring mental health parity and writing the standards of care, as specified in the Wit v UBH decision, into law. The campaign aims to update Illinois law with clear and commonsense definitions and standards of mental health care in order to decrease costs, reduce homelessness, and save lives.

• Telehealth: Jennifer Froemel, of the PsiAN Insurance Committee, testified in the Illinois legislature in support of telehealth. PsiAN also joined the Kennedy Forum Illinois, Inseparable, and other organizations to support the Health is Health Illinois campaign, which is focused on ensuring mental health parity and writing the standards of care, as specified in the Wit v UBH decision, into law. The campaign aims to update Illinois law with clear and commonsense definitions and standards of mental health care in order to decrease costs, reduce homelessness, and save lives.

• Our Co-Founder, Linda Michaels, was invited to participate in the panel, Federal and State Telehealth and Parity: What We Are Doing, What Can Be Done, hosted by the American Psychoanalytic Association

EDUCATION

• PsiAN offered a series of webinars for students/trainees/early-career therapists working with children to offer support as their training was interrupted by the pandemic. The series of webinars occurred throughout the year, and included didactics as well as ample time for open discussion. The strong attendance at the webinars indicated that we were really filling an unmet need to support participants during this most trying time.

• On Saturday, June 5, Santiago Delboy, LCSW, MBA, and PsiAN co-chair Linda Michaels, PsyD, MBA, hosted a special presentation for PsiAN members, entitled “PsiAN's Original Research: Repositioning Therapies of Depth, Insight and Relationship.” The presentation covered the large-scale study PsiAN conducted in 2020 examining the general public’s attitudes, beliefs, and biases about therapy. The good news: We learned that people want what we’re offering—not just symptom relief, but therapy that gets to the root of the problem—but they don’t know how or where to find it. Based on our data, we’re now in a position to help them find what they’re seeking.

• Started mentorship program for undergrad students interested in the field of psychology

GIFTS

• The Group for the Advancement of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in Psychology (GAPPP) has awarded PsiAN a tremendously generous grant of $100,000 -- $75,000 plus $25,000 we raised in matching funds. The grant will help PsiAN leverage its original market research with the media, and take these results to the public.

• The Sarnat-Hoffman Philanthropic Fund awarded PsiAN a grant of $50,000, to support the hiring of a new executive director. We are so grateful to Joan Sarnat — for seeing PsiAN’s potential and helping us achieve our vision of professionalizing and hiring our very first executive director!

PUBLICATIONS

• Co-Founder Linda Michaels wrote a playful, yet serious, article about the experience of Talkspace suing her and PsiAN: After being sued by Talkspace, I never thought I'd be agreeing with them. Or am I?  Medium upgraded her article and published it in their Noteworthy section, where articles are showcased and handpicked by their staff.

• We made it into the New York Times again! In August 2021, Co-Founder Linda Michaels was featured, photo and all, in an important article on mental health parity, Teachers, Police, and Other Public Workers Left Out of Mental Health Coverage. She is quoted throughout the article on the ways in which insurance coverage falls far short of covering mental health, especially for the employees of the City of Chicago -- our first responders in this pandemic.

• And again! In June 2021, Co-Founder Linda Michaels was quoted in a New York Times article Something Bothering You? Tell It to Woebot. Woebot is a therapy app that uses AI to deliver CBT-style therapy. “These apps really shortchange the essential ingredient that — mounds of evidence show — is what helps in therapy, which is the therapeutic relationship,” Linda said. 

• And again! In May 2021, The NYT published “Drugstore Therapy: The Wrong Approach,” a letter that PsiAN’s Co-Chairs wrote in response to an article on bringing “retail therapy” to the masses. “While we face a growing mental health pandemic following the Covid-19 pandemic, the retail offerings from CVS, Walmart and Walgreens are unlikely to help in significant ways,” we write. “We know what helps people who are suffering — a trusted relationship with a well-trained professional who will help get to the root of issues.”

2020

GROWTH

• Added Meiram Bendat and Glen Gabbard to our Advisory Board

• Tripled our individual membership

• Welcomed over a dozen new Partners

ADVOCACY

• Telementalhealth advocacy - With the COVID pandemic forcing mental health services to go on video or phone, we wanted to ensure that access and availability to quality therapy would continue. We advocated for parity for tele-therapy, and also wanted to protect the public from apps and avatars. So here’s what we did:

  • Crafted the PsiAN position statement on telehealth policy

  • Drafted a letter on telehealth policy that went out on Mental Health Liaison Group (MHLG) letterhead to Congress and Dept of Labor

  • Rallied our field with this petition, and almost 50,000 signatures: Full and Fair Coverage for Telementalhealth

  • Created a database to track insurance denials, carveouts or restrictions of any kind

  • Served on APsaA’s COVID-19 Advisory Team, to help provide information and support to the public, frontline workers and mental health professionals

• Petition against Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) signed a formal memorandum of agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)  sharing confidential therapy notes from therapy sessions] with separated children, this violating one of the key tenets of quality therapy (Petition: Stop Using Psychotherapy Notes to Harm)

• Submitted proposal on Chicago disconnected youth, along with our partners, the Juvenile Protective Association (JPA), Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, and The Wingspan Project -- and this was quoted here in the Chicago Tribune

• Midwest Business Group on Health participation

• Illinois Mental Health Summit participation

• Illinois Psychological Association Legislative Committee participation

• Digital Health Data Initiative - participation in work group on outcomes and metrics

GOT NOTICED

• Won the $40MM lawsuit for defamation and libel that Talkspace filed against us! Not only did we win the lawsuit, but we made the front page of the New York Times Business Section, in a searing article by Kashmir Hill.

• Featured in the article on Talkspace and the ethical issues and limited effectiveness of app/web-based products, published in the Washington Post by Katherine Ellison: E-Therapy Apps See Booming Business. I gave one a try

• Featured in “The Problem with Uber for Therapy,” in The Atlantic. Our Co-Chair Janice Muhr is quoted as she defends quality therapy in this quick-fix, uberization of mental healthcare.

USING OUR VOICE

• Launched our webinar series for students and trainees whose education and clinical training was disrupted by COVID

• Launched the PsiAN Forum - original articles written by our members and invited guest authors, along with the occasional poem and photograph

• Launched our own quarterly newsletter for members - updates on the value of quality therapy, factors that threaten it, research and 

• Issued comments to the American Psychological Association on pending rules and regulations that would affect the practice and scope of psychology

• Trained our members in advocacy and our Advocacy Toolkit

GIFTS

• Very significant donation by Dr. and Mrs. Alvin and Aurelia Michaels

PUBLICATIONS

• Therapy that Sticks: Why Depth Therapy is More Enduring than a Quick Fix, by Linda Michaels, our Co Chair, and published by Aeon

  And, the article was highlighted by David Brooks (!), who wrote “this is a glimpse of a more human way to confront psychological problems.”

• What’s in a Hashtag? #InThisTogether: Fantasy and Fallacy. A Psychologist’s Perspective, by Linda Michaels, our Co Chair

2019

GROWTH

• 1454 individual members

• 53 Strategic Partner organizations

• 33 members on Steering Committee

• Launched PsiAN Advocacy, a 501c4 for advocacy activities, in addition to our existing 501c3 non-profit organization

• YET we are still operated exclusively by volunteers 100% of the time! (Your gifts REALLY matter!)

GOT NOTICED

• Enlisted Mark Solms and Nancy McWilliams as Advisers, joining Jonathan Shedler, Enrico Gnaulati and Todd Essig

• Gifted $10,000 from the Robert and Virginia Shiller Family Foundation, based on support for our overall mission

• Gifted a very significant donation by Dr. and Mrs. Alvin and Aurelia Michaels

• Awarded a research grant from the American Psychological Foundation to help fund the project to re-brand talk therapy

• Launched crowdfunding campaign to fund market research and raised over $16k (so far!) 

• Hosted 484 discussions on our listserv

MADE SOME NOISE

• Completed 3 rounds of qualitative research and sent preliminary quantitative survey to 4000 individuals

• Published articles on the landmark Wit v UBH class action lawsuit that defines the standards of care insurance companies should all be pay for

• Wrote to the APA and Betsy Devos about the closure of Argosy, and the impacts this has on training the therapists of the future

• Responded to NBC’s article touting “CBT as the gold standard”

• Critiqued the American Psychiatric Association’s guideline for treating schizophrenia

• Presented a panel at the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting on the Othering of Psychoanalysis

• Assembled a group of experts to protest the APA’s endorsement of CBT for chronic pain, and its failure to mention the possibility of curing chronic pain with therapies of depth, insight and relationship

• Commented on the Illinois state budget for mental health spending

• Held our big conference in December, with experts from around the country and even across the pond!

• Created the PsiAN Advocacy Toolkit, to be unveiled at the conference

• Spoke out to the American Psychological Association about ethical concerns regarding insurance companies entering into transactions with companies providing text-based therapies.

• Kept our PTSD petition alive -- at 57,290 signatures and counting!

Most of all, this year we are thrilled that we have succeeded in placing the need to protect therapies of depth, insight and relationship back at the heart of our ongoing professional dialogue!  

2018

• Presented at the Illinois Psychological Association annual conference, on “Protecting the Therapeutic Relationship in the Age of Technology”

• Wrote to Illinois legislators about a proposed law to require emotional-social screening of all children, and our concerns about implementing such a law, without adequate resources for treatment, lack of an effective referral process, and possible stigmatization

• Signed onto a letter sent to the President outlining the psychological and emotional effects of separating young children from their parents, especially as these families had endured and were encountering significant traumas

• Created a pamphlet for immigrant/refugee parents who were separated from their children and about to be reunited, describing what parents might see in their children’s behaviors and emotions, how they might understand these reactions, and how they could deal with being reunited and together again.  Collaboration between PsiAN, Section II: Childhood and Adolescence and Section V: Applied Clinical Psychoanalysis of Division 39 (Society of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology) of the American Psychological Association, with graphic design support from Child First.

• PsiAN wrote in support of the letter crafted by the ACLU and others regarding the consent decree for the Chicago Police Department, highlighting the needs to support police officers and others, such as 911 operators, who may be impacted by trauma, and to increase resources dedicated to mental health treatment, including supervision for those counseling first responders. 

• Standing strong with striking mental health workers at Kaiser Permanente, and showing our concern for excessively long wait times and effective rationing of care, we wrote a letter of support focused on the importance of the clinician being empowered to determine the course of treatment and the treatment relationship between clinician and patient being respected as central. 

• Published a comment in JAMA, with an MD and a psychology researcher, on the evidence showing that CBT is not effective in treating the psychological aspects of chronic pain, and depth therapy approaches work better (10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.5332)