Academy of Medical Psychology education center is a place where the Academy provides written examination in the sequence for Board Certification in Medical Psychology (ABMP Diplomate Process), provides free CEs for our AMP members and our Diplomates in the Specialty, and where other psychologists, physician, nurse practitioners, social workers, and counselors can get CE training. 

A Medical Psychologist is a licensed doctor of psychology with post doctoral training in the biosciences and psychopharmacology, combined with advanced specialty skills applying clinical psychology training and skills, post graduate bioscience and psychopharmacology training and skills, and integration of these trainings and skill sets in the national Medical Facilities or in support of these facilities in the diagnosis and clinical and pharmacological and behavioral and lifestyle treatments of emotional disorders and medical diseases.  The specialist in Medical Psychology completes coursework or didactics, a written and oral examination, a residency or preceptorship prior to becoming a board certified Medical Psychologist.  A medical psychologist is different that a psychopharmacologist who is a licensed psychologist who has biomedical and pharmacology expertise.


Joint NAPPP/ABMP Post Doctorate Medical Psychology and Psychopharmacology Training Program

Introduction:  NAPPP (National Alliance of Professional Psychology Providers: http://www.nappp.org/ ; NAPPP)  and ABMP (American Board of Medical Psychology & the Academy of Medical Psychology; www.amphome.org : ABMP/AMP) have consolidated their Post Doctoral Training Programs and are offering a sequence of courses and exams supplemented by a Friday 10AM to 11AM seminar (that may be electronically attended by Skype).  Exams are taken on line and are password protected and machine scored.  Course material are password protected (multiple courses may be taken simultaneously by instructor approval) and the material consists of a combination of research reviews, You Tube Presentations, Slide Presentations, and instructor feedback.  The student must show a 70% or above performance on quizzes (internal to a course) and the final exam in order to get passing credit for the course.  Students who fail a course must arrange a remediation plan with the instructor prior to proceeding to further courses in the sequence.

Certificate and Continuing Education Credit:

NAPPP CE Credits:  Some (a few) courses at this site are done with review, approval, and control of the National Alliance of Professional Psychology Providers (NAPPP; http://www.nappp.org).  NAPPP maintains sole responsibility for ensuring that our courses meet the APA CE Standards and for filing CE documentation and annual program review and evaluation.  


Note:  The best source for authoritative medical information in the US is the National Library of Medicine's medical database called PubMed, that indexes citations and abstracts of over 7 million articles from more than 3,800 medical journals published worldwide.

Pub Med (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ ) was developed for professionals and is the primary source utilized by health care providers for keeping up with the latest advances in clinical medicine.
A second Important Data Base for free research is PLOS:  go to http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018009

    Available courses

    Specialist Written Examination

    This examination is for those who have completed all post doctorate training in Medical Psychology including academic training, preceptorship, and who have passed credentials review and have passed to "Candidacy Status".  Once Candidacy Status has been achieved and payment of examination fee has been achieved the Candidate may apply for a password to take this 100 item national examination in Medical Psychology.

    Candidates will have one hour and 30 minutes to complete the 100 written questions.  Candidates must pass this examination at 75% correct or more in order to progress to the required Oral Examination Phase of board certification in Medical Psychology (Skype examination administered orally by a panel of specialists using a pool of essay questions from which to pull randomly).

    If you have questions contact Dr. Jerry Morris at cmhcjerry@sbcglobal.net .

    Biochemistry

    This is the basic post-doctoral level biochemistry review for the Medical Psychologist.  Introduction and overview of the biochemistry underlying chemical and physiological processes.  Topics covered include: basic inorganic and organic chemistry, cellular organization and metabolic processes, nucleic acids, hormones, enzymatic processes, metabolism, and biochemistry of selected compounds.  Other include topics as energy production, nutrition, glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, lipids, genetics, biochemical cycles and other biochemical principles important to human life. Materials focus on pathophysiological and pharmacological applications of this knowledge base.

    Medication Assisted Techniques for Addiction

    Recent recognition by the US Government of an Opioid Epidemic and deeming it a "physician caused epidemic" has resulted in extended Congressional funding and new guidelines relative to the prescription of opioids, street abuse of opioids (synthetic heroin/narcotics) and heroin, and treatment of these disorders (opioid use, abuse, dependence).   Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration notes: "Under federal law, MAT patients must receive counseling, which could include different forms of behavioral therapy. These services are required along with medical, vocational, educational, and other assessment and treatment services."

    Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) is not really "a treatment", but rather a technique that has proven to help early stabilization and to enhance engagement and adherence to treatment for opiate abuse or dependence! It is clear from the science, and established law and rules and guidelines that the MAT Technique, without a more comprehensive psychotherapy and rehabilitation plan is not an adequate Treatment for Abuse or Addiction.  It is also clear from the literature that these individuals often have co-occuring mental illness, lots of medical illness, and that a psychologist and psychological diagnostician is essential in a symmetrical multi-disciplinary treatment team to diagnose and order an adequate treatment plan for opiate abuse or dependence disordered individuals!

    This course reviews MAT, it's place in Comprehensive Treatment assessment and plans, and rehabilitation of Opiate abusers or dependent individuals.  The Medical Psychologist will increasingly be pressed into leading multi-disciplinary treatment teams of substance abuse counselors, nurses, MAT physicians, nurse practitioners, mid-level mental health professionals, and case managers.  This program begins the educational process toward that result and goal.

    Syllabus-Schizophrenia and the Genome-Wide Association Study: Strong Statistics, Weak Effects

    Genes only cause a very few long-term genetic disorders and almost all disease is not caused by a gene, but by Risk Factors Psychological, Behavioral, and Lifestyle choices and actions long term.  Many such behaviors result in the “throwing of gene switches”!  For instance, an athlete is well documented with practice, nutrition, and instruction to throw gene switches that cause the body and mind to mutate in a positive direction over time for their sport.  Likewise, an Obese person is making behavioral, lifestyle, psychological, and nutritional choices that throw gene switches and their body and mind noticeably change for the negative.  A third grade teacher, with 9 months and 6 hours a day of repetition and instruction throws gene switches and 30 years later the fostered/taught neuron growth (neuroplasticity) results in the person having a morphed brain/growth that makes them still know that 3X5-15!

    These are examples of environmental (inner and outer) risk and growth factors that throw gene switches at the cell nucleus, but they don’t represent the “Myth of Genetic Determinism”!

    Educated Medical Psychologists and Behavioral Health and Substance Abuse professionals must understand this and educate the patient and public in clear and understandable ways.


    Treating Obesity: A national healthcare crisis

    Obesity is a national epidemic that has been shown to negatively affect physical health, mental health, role function, lifestyle, longevity, and health economics and resource usage.  A Medical Psychologist and psychologist working in hospitals and primary care facilities, in linkage to these facilities, in a community program, or in private practice needs expertise in understanding the literature, incidence and prevalence, effects, and diagnostic and clinical need of obese and morbid obese patients.

    In this module, you can have a great review of the literature and techniques in this area, and have a solid background to lead staff, teams, programs, and facilities in the area of obesity and related clinical needs.

    Review the slides and attached notes and bibliography, and when finished proceed to take the Quiz.  Remember, you must pass the quiz with 70j% correct to get CE Credit for this course.  You will receive 3 APA Approved CEUs in affiliation with NAPPP (www.nappp.org) with successful completion of this course.  If you have problems or questions email:  cmhcjerry@sbcglobal.net .

    Pain Control and Treatment

    This course reviews the new Guidelines on Pain Management promulgated in  March 2016 as a result of the Surgeon General's declaring Opiate Abuse and Related Harm and Deaths as an Epidemic.  This got HEW, SAMSHA, and CDC together to look into the situation, science, and techniques and establish new Science Based Protocols.  This resulted in dramatic change, serious restrictive recommendation for opiate techniques, raising Behavioral Techniques to part of first-line treatment for pain.


    This section will provide the Medical Psychologist with a thorough understanding of the modern guidelines and scientifically supported techniques for the treatment of pain and methods of devising scientifically supported treatment plans.

    Neuropsychology Technician Training

    Busy Medical Psychologists are often required to do brief neuropsych screenings and evaluations and consultation involving identification of aging and decline, trauma residual damage, and related advice to medical teams about diagnosis and treatment and placement or linkage with services! Consequently, many Medical Psychologists will, of necessity, develop introductory or even advanced neuropsychological expertise, skill, and local laboratory set ups with trained technicians or assistants (now allowed for the gathering of data for the doctor by Medicare-if the psychologist is on the premises, and many insurers.   AMP is advocating for CMS and state Medicaid Programs to adopt similar assistant rules and regulations.

    Consequently, the Medical Psychologist must show, and document in the assistant's personnel file, that they have responsibly, ethically, and conscientiously trained their assistants and that they have thus privileged them based on performance in training, and that they are in close ordering and professional supervision of these assistants and that the Medical Psychologist does the interpretation of the data and writes the reports and affixes the diagnoses.

    This set of tests CE Training is the first in a line of CEs that our Medical Psychologists, and AMP Members, can easily access and utilize to train their neuropsychological technicians.

    This CE, and each training module in this section,  will afford 3.0 hours of CE for licensed psychologists for each neuropsychological test module they complete, and the doctor taking the CE first adds credibility to the later use of this CE to train technicians/assistants under the direction of the psychologist.

    Suicide Assessment and Prevention

    This is a 4 CE course for the Hospital or Primary Care Psychologist or Physician with responsibility to assess and manage suicidal patients.  Doctors assessing for suicide must know risk factors, protective factors, sub-population incidence and prevalence, short assessment techniques and questionnaires for "screening", and longer and in depth diagnostics capable of both further differentiating risk and establishing diagnostic for adequate treatment planning.

    This course provides these tools and techniques and linkage to technologies and science that is helpful.

    There is perhaps no more important skill set, competency, and responsibility of the mental health and substance abuse professional, clinical director, house officer, or emergency department specialist.  Every supervisor and trainer needs these skills.

    Treatment of Anxiety Disorders (neuroses)

    In this course the Medical Psychologist and student of medical psychology will review the array of neurotic disorders with cardinal feature of disruptive and consistent maladaptive poor modulation and adaptation to feelings of anxiety.  These individuals, fixated at the Youthful Developmental level often present as overly driven, other directed and therefore insecure and worried, perfectionistic, tense, and driven individuals who care too much, try to hard, and disrupt feeling and thinking, and behavioral systems while being "too well raised", and feeling inadequate.  They often invest much of this tension in their bodies and have significant somatic symptoms.

    The array of well established symptom focused and syndrome and growth oriented psychotherapy interventions, pharmaceutical adjunctive techniques, and behavioral activation and contextual family and social techniques are reviewed.

    The very biased and compulsively medicalized published and recommended protocols are held up to the light of the scientific evidence that is contraindicative of "medication only approaches" to these disorders is illuminated.

    Motivational Interviewing Techniques and Theory

    This course provides the Medical Psychologist and the student interested in Medical Psychology with basic knowledge and skills in Motivational Interviewing founded on the Approach Avoidance literature and techniques of Dollard and Miller, basic patient centered (counseling trained individuals call them clients) relational and reflective techniques, and self-efficacy approaches all amalgamated by Rollnick and Miller.

    SBIRT, The next step in Integrated Care Methods

    The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association has developed and tested a methodology for Primary Care screening of patients using scientifically validated short screening instruments (2-5 minutes) and using these tools to effect Prevention and Psycho-education interviews, Brief Intervention (using techniques to motivate change), Brief Therapy, or Referral to Specialty Therapy.  This system is called SBIRT and allows for the use of several validated screening instruments, and requires follow-through, available referral linkages with specialists as needed, and reimbursement codes have been developed for Medicaid, Medicare, and Insurers.

    This module trains the behavioral specialist in the SBIRT method, helps them access approved screening instruments, and prepares them to work in these integrated care systems that hospitals and primary care systems will be developing. 

    At the end of this module the psychologist will be familure with the screening, prevention, brief intervention, brief therapy, referral and specialty care required components, and the staffing models and available opportunities for psychologists in these systems. 

    Bipolar Disorder: Introduction to Basic Science

    This course is a basic introduction to the basic science relative to Bipolar Disorders.  Components include what we know about the development of mood disorders and the brain mechanisms upon which these disorders are based.  This includes environmental mutations of the brain, brain growth and development, psychological development and stages of development, neuroplasticity and neurologically informed treatment. 

    Traditionally, bipolar spectrum disorders have been treated with "medication only approaches" and this has led psychiatry to conclude that these diseases are not likely to change!  However, research on neuroplasticity, learning and the brain, and cognitive therapies and family therapies and assertive community treatment models do not share this conclusion.  Clearly, research has made the limitations of psychotropic medications increasingly clear.  Those who treat severe mental illness with more than major tranquilizers, mood stabilizers (membrane potential changers), and antidepressants do not share the pessimistic view and point to science supporting their positions.

    Still, many Bipolar Spectrum Disorders are being mistreated with "medication only approaches" in the USA, and most psychiatrists lead this movement.

    The Medical Psychologist must adhere to more scientifically, morally, and ethically based approaches to these disorders.

    By the end of this course you will have a general perspective about the multifactorial causes of Bipolar Disorders (family and developmental environments, chronic stress, gene triggers that interact with the environment, and trauma), the ability of the brain to grow with the proper reprograming, the appropriate treatment plans to effect change (multitechnique), and adopt a "hopeful, optimistic, and reassuring philosophical position" so helpful to these patients and families.  Additionally, you will be able to use this knowledge to lobby insurance companies and other payer sources on behalf of these patients, to educate the public, and to educate patients and families suffering from these disorders.

    Sleep and Its Functions and Predictive Significance

    Sleep is vital to health and disturbed in a variety of mental, substance abuse, and physical illness and our patterns change over our human life cycle.  This course provides a summary of the research, implications for health and the diagnosis and treatment of disorders and for suicide prevention.

    Training & Interfacing with Hospital and Nursing Home Nursing Staff to Manage Mental Patients

    This course assists the psychologist with amasing the foundation knowledge and teaching tools to assist health facility nursing departments and staff with learning how to interface with the doctor of psychology in managing patients with mental illness and the issues that arise in their diagnoses, treatment, and the establishment of appropriate aftercare plans and linkage with outpatient care.

    This course is valueable for psychologists, nurses, hospital social workers, and physician leaders who are increasingly asked to form pramary care facility multidisciplinary and emergency department teams to handle acute episodes with mentally ill patients.

    To take this course please contact Dr. Jerry Morris at cmhcjerry@sbcglobal.net and reference H01 and pay your $150 fee and get a password assigned.  AMP members can take this course for free.  All who wish 3 hours of CE credit will need to pay a slight added CE filing fee.  .

    Neuroplasticity & The Development or Degradation of the Brain & Personality

    The Brain and its' consequent-personality are fluid and constantly changing aspects of the human.  The science has now become quite clear-"Biology is Not Destiny"!  In other words, those who are well versed in the current state of science have moved out of the previous (and primitive) concept of genes as "cookie cutters" that are fixed at conception, and the brain and its' cells only growing in infancy and childhood, and the resulting Drug Manufacturers "marketing ploy" trying to convince us we are "a biological soup", or that mentally ill people are best understood as "biologically imbalanced"!

    This course helps you with a review of the current state of science about brain and neural system development, differentiation, modification and growth or degradation, and relates this to some general science about how humans learn, how psychotherapy works, and why "medication only approaches" to the treatment of mental illness are "unscientific", "near hoaxing", "not supported by supervising bodies and organizations", and probably preditorial and unethical!

    The modern psychotherapist is pointed at the literature that can prepare them above this introductory level for providing "brain change" and "neurobiologically and psychologically informed psychological diagnosis and psychotherapy".

    Psychology Practice in Medicare

    Medical Psychologists and General Clinical Psychologists will increasingly have to work in, or in close colaboration with, the Primary Care and Community Hospital System.  This system is ever evolving toward a multi-disciplinary team delivery system in an Ingegrated Care Model where the Primary Care Physician is the hub of the healthcare wheel, and psychologists and psychiatrists are in collaboration with the patient's general physician.

    This course assists the psychologist with understanding the evolving Medicare Program (which often drives Medicaid and Private Insurance changes) and provides basic skills related to practicing in the Medicare system and facilities that will increasingly require that the psychologist and other doctors are Medicare providers.

    About This Site: Introduction to Site Use and Codes of Conduct

    This section is where we do a brief orientation to the use of this site, our site code of conduct, and where we inform you about where you can get assistance and can get your questions answered.

    Brief Therapies-Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Substance Abuse

    Increasingly Integrated Care and practice in health facilities, managed care companies and insurance companies, and Government contractors are requiring updated CE training in substance abuse training and scientifically valid techniques.

    This Brief Therapy using CBT for substance abusers uses a text from SAMSHA that has been developed by top scientists and clinicians and that can be downloaded in searchable PDF format from that Government agency.  Additionally, several YouTube training URLs are provided to explore background from different types of trainers of CBT and CBT for substance abusers.  The course syllabus provides notes about the key points that must be mastered.

    Please enjoy this 4 CEs that is free to AMP Society Members and Diplomates, but available for $150 for non-members needing updated CBT and Substance Abuse CEs.

    Primary Care Psychology: The Case for Psychologist Staffing Standards

    This course presents the scientific data that compels the US Primary Care and Community Hospital System to establish staffing standards for all Medicare and Medicaid reimbursed healthcare system that include doctors of psychology.  These healthcare programs are the hub of the wheel of the US healthcare system and they simply can't take care of the demand for mental health and substance use disorders (SUDs) and the behavioral and psychological aspects of chronic physical disease.  


    This section not only provides the doctor of psychology and the Medical Psychologist Specialist with the scientific support for this position, but it provides these doctors with the materials they need to advocate for adequate Bylaws, Policies and Procedures, and administrative support to assist the public in these facilities by removing barriers to their practice to the full extent of their legally authorized  scope of practice (a component of the ACA law).