Nicholas A. Cummings, PhD is a visionary who for half a century not only was able to foresee the future of professional psychology, he helped create it. A former president of the American Psychological Association (APA), he formed a number of national organizations in response to trends. He launched the professional school movement by founding the four campuses of the California School of Professional Psychology that established clinicians as full-fledged members of the faculty. As chief of mental health for the Kaiser Permanente health system in the 1950s, he wrote and implemented the first prepaid psychotherapy contract in the era when psychotherapy was an exclusion rather than a covered benefit in health insurance. He wrote what is known as the freedom-of-choice legislation that requires insurers to reimburse psychologists along with psychiatrists, and he conducted the medical cost offset research showing that psychological interventions save medical/surgical dollars.
Foreseeing the industrialization of healthcare, and particularly behavioral healthcare, Cummings founded American Biodyne, the nation's first psychology-driven managed behavioral health organization (MBHO). Other organizations he founded were the National Academies of Practice, the National Council of Professional School of Psychology (NCSPP), the San Joaquin County Psychological Association, and the American Managed Behavioral Healthcare Association (AMBHA). With others he co-founded the California Psychological Association, the San Francisco Bay Area Psychological Association, the Council for the Advancement of the Psychological Professions and Sciences (CAPPS). In spite of being controversial all of his life, he is the recipient of numerous awards, including psychology's highest, the APF Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Practice.
Cummings has written over 450 journal articles and 45 books, 8 of them with his daughter, Dr. Janet Cummings. Throughout the half-century of professional activity, Dr. Cummings never saw less than 40 to 50 patients per week in private practice. His belief has been that once he lost contact with hands-on clinical practice, he would lose sight of the important factors in clinical psychology.
At present, Cummings resides in Reno, Nevada with his wife, Dorothy. He is Distinguished Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. He chairs the boards of directors of both The Nicholas & Dorothy Cummings Foundation, Inc. and CareIntegra, and he is president of the Cummings Foundation for Behavioral Health.