Message from the President

GPA President: Kamieka Gabriel, PhD

Welcome Members! I am truly honored to be president of the Georgia Psychological Association.

As we move towards the end of the pandemic, I wanted to acknowledge the pain and loss that so many of us have experienced throughout this unprecedented time. I hope you continue to work towards healing and finding peace.

Although there has been pain and loss, there has also been strength and community. We rallied around each other, sharing knowledge and support and helping each other change how we provide services to our clients. We reached out to other health professionals, frontline workers and various communities giving away what we do best: helping people cope. We shared a collective anger and sadness over the continuing racial injustice and looked at what we could do to make positive and lasting change. We advocated to get compensated for ways to provide services to our clients and keep them and ourselves safe. I’m so proud of us.

My presidential priorities draw on those strengths that I mentioned: advocacy, community and diversity.

I initially joined GPA due to its advocacy work. At that time, the Legal and Legislative Committee was working on passing a bill to give psychologists prescription privileges. Even though, the bill did not pass, GPA was seen as a worthy organization at the Capitol and had a seat at the table when it came to providing research on issues affecting Georgians’ mental health and wellbeing. This helped when it came to passing bills on psychological testing and PSYPACT. It also helped when we spoke about bills that would be harmful to the people we served. It is important that this tradition continues with GPA being the go-to organization for advocacy for psychologists and the people we serve. That is done by expanding the Legal Legislative Committee, having consistent donations to the Political Action Committee and having membership willing to respond when needed for professional and social justice issues.

But I understand that for members to be comfortable and willing to get involved in advocacy or any other request we may have, you need to feel a part of the GPA community. Needs assessments have been conducted by the Social Justice Taskforce which was established last year, and by an amazing group of graduate students at University of Georgia’s Counseling Psychology program, to determine if GPA is meeting the needs of members and non-members. The plan is to use these assessments to make recommendations to maintain and grow our membership. We are in the process of deciding what recommendations to incorporate in hopes of making every single psychology professional and student feel welcome and find value in being a member of GPA.

Preliminary recommendations from both assessments highlight the importance of implementing diversity, equity and inclusion principles throughout the entire organization. Along with the Social Justice Task Force recommendation, we will take guidance from APA’s equity, diversity, and inclusion plan. This will help us better infuse the principles of GPA’s diversity statement that was created last fall.

I am consistently drawn to the final words of the diversity statement: “We view psychologists as leaders in society, and are committed to using our voices to amplify those of historically marginalized groups, and/or social and intersectional identities, and to combat racism and other forms of prejudice in our society.”

My tenure with GPA has been a wonderful journey of opportunity, support, and inclusivity. If members have not been experiencing at least a part of what I have experienced, then there is more work to do.

Please feel free to reach out to me about your interests, ideas, concerns or to just say, hello.

Kamieka O. S. Gabriel, Ph.D.

president@gapsychology.org