Rural populations as small communities requiring sensitivity to rural culture have received increased attention with professional psychology's commitment to underexamined aspects of multiculturalism including geographic location. This article presents multidisciplinary approaches to service provision and training as natural models in rural and frontier communities and addresses the need for psychologists to move out of a monoculture model of training only in psychology to better serve rural consumers of mental health services. Overviews of rural health curriculum and training models as well as new health delivery options developing in nonmetropolitan areas such as prescriptive authority for psychology are provided. Suggestions are offered for state and territorial psychological associations regarding the needs of rural psychologists.

In a changing health care environment, civilian and military health care consumers served by public sector health care professionals face many obstacles in accessing services. Barriers to treatment may be geographical, bureaucratic, financial, and/or social for different populations. The exigent nature of combat and its psychological sequalae are a critical consideration as well. Consequently, “serving the underserved” has been explicitly at the core of organized psychology's prescriptive authority (RxP) initiative since its inception. This article provides an overview of the mental health care needs of underserved health care consumers from several perspectives: active duty military and veterans, prison inmates, Canada, and individuals in rural communities lacking qualified medical mental health practitioners. RxP advocates must demonstrate its value in a cost-conscious environment, and the profession should support continued efforts at building RxP capacity in the public sector. Ultimately, the RxP initiative is consistent with a competence-based health care regulatory system.

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