Ominous numbers–666– the APA internship imbalance continues to burn

Ominous numbers–666– the APA internship imbalance continues to burn

The system used to train new psychologists in the United States is on fire and has been for a long time.

“As of December 31, 2025, the number of registered applicants exceeded the number of registered internship positions by 666.” This is based on the latest psychology internship match statistics from APPIC [see https://www.appic.org/internships/Match/MATCH-NEWS-2025-26].

The country needs more psychologists, meanwhile we don’t have the ability to train them. The American Psychological Association has pushed for complete control and accreditation of internships, but of course that means 666 current psychology graduate students likely won’t get internships at all.

Meanwhile, the APA has taken efforts to propose some type of licensing at the master’s level after years of saying psychology is a doctoral level profession and an APA-accredited internship for those doctoral professionals is required for competence. [ex: see https://www.apa.org/education-career/grad/understanding-model-licensing-act].

Truly devilish.

Here is to hoping that in the future APA stops trying to harm psychologists who had APA “equivalent” internships, given that the internship imbalance appears to continue to worsen again.