
Beth N. Rom-Rymer, Ph. D.
For APA President
Pioneered women’s educational opportunities; trained with internationally renowned psychologists; early co-founder/President, domestic violence shelter; teaching next generations; author; multiple leadership roles/awards, APA/IPA/community;President, National Register;APF; international leadership; legislative advocacy to serve society’s vulnerable. As APA President: collaborative, intersectional, team focus on science; bridge-building; EDI; unraveling/solving our world’s toughest challenges.
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We are living in a world shaken by trauma: the ongoing crimes against humanity in Ukraine; the struggle to sustain international democratic states amidst authoritarianism; the battles to inoculate people, worldwide, against Covid-19, while Covid deaths and post-acute Covid symptoms continue to devastate families and communities; the suffering caused by institutional racism, anti-Semitism, violence against BIPOC, LGBTQ, AAPI, other-abled communities.
My life’s work as trauma clinician, forensic expert, legislative advocate, University lecturer, author, state/national/international leader, uniquely qualifies me to be APA President.
Psychologists, because of our extraordinary education, training, and experience, have an impact, every day, on the lives of those who are suffering in our local, national, and international communities.Therefore, I wholeheartedly support the critical work done by academic researchers and experimental psychologists; social, forensic, industrial, organizational, and all applied psychologists; and the frontline work of clinicians. We will continue to powerfully speak on behalf of all psychologists!
I passionately believe in protecting clinical practice while seeking to expand practice to include: prescriptive authority; integrated behavioral health in primary care and in a variety of healthcare/medical settings; community mental health; public/population health; and a plethora of collaborative working relationships among scientists and clinicians, working on ways to achieve health equity. I am especially interested in identifying and applying effective models of treatment, focused on enhancing positive adaptation to adversity.
Having had broad experience in APA governance, including APA Board, APA Council, CLT Chair, SPTA and Division President, and as a founder and leader of the International Prescriptive Authority Movement, I understand how to get things done! I strongly support SPTA leadership and envision our advancing multi-disciplinary, multicultural, and multinational leadership of both APA and APF.
As your President, I will walk courageously, with you, into our future. My outreach to all of our communities will be collaborative, intersectional, with an emphasis on scientific evidence and psychological knowledge, bridge-building, EDI, and gender and sexual diversity, to unravel and solve our world’s toughest challenges.
Beth N. Rom-Rymer, Ph.D. has been a pioneer throughout her life. She was in the first class of women at Princeton University, graduating in 1973. Dr. Rom-Rymer created the Victim-Witness Assistance Unit in the State Attorney's Office, Tallahassee, Florida, in 1977, where she worked on the Ted Bundy serial murder case, 1978-1979. During that time, she also co-founded and was the first Board president of Refuge House, a shelter for surviving families of domestic violence in Tallahassee, Florida. Dr. Rom-Rymer gave a keynote talk at the 40th anniversary celebration of Refuge House. Dr. Rom-Rymer is one of the psychologists who created the field of forensic geriatrics in 2000, testifying, nationally, in cases concerning the sexual abuse of older adults in nursing homes and writing book chapters about the role of the forensic psychologist in geriatric settings. Foreseeing the critical need for comprehensive mental health prescribers, Dr. Rom-Rymer undertook training in Clinical Psychopharmacology during the 1990's and became a national leader in the advocacy for psychologists' prescriptive authority, when she was elected the fourth president of the fledgling APA Division 55 (Pharmacotherapy) in 2004.