marlene m maheu

Dr. Maheu is known for many “firsts.”

As behavioral health’s first telehealth pioneer, Marlene Maheu, PhD has been a trailblazer, advocating for the responsible use of technology to scale services to serve the millions of people who need but have limited or no access to healthcare.

Dr. Maheu was the first to offer a mental health service online without corporate sponsorship. The online resource for consumer mental health information was known as Self Help Magazine (SHPM), and served millions of people worldwide.
She received the first grant from NIMH to showcase digital mental health at President Clinton’s Second Inauguration in Washington DC.
In 1995, Dr. Maheu chaired the first Telehealth-related Task Force at the APA.
In 1998, she was appointed to a 3-year term on APA’s Committee for Professional Practice Standards (COPPS) as its first “telehealth lead.” She has since served on more than a dozen task forces and committees related to telehealth in a variety of national and state associations.
She was the first psychologist to be the lead author of an article about the use of technology in clinical practice published in a psychology journal (Psychological Research and Practice, 2000).
She was the first psychologist to be the lead author of a telehealth academic and professional book.
Dr. Maheu has served on a dozen professional association committees and task forces related to telemental health to assist with developing telehealth and technology standards, guidelines, and other consensus documents.
Since 1995, she was the first psychologist to offer telepsychology-related in-person training. Her webinars, conference panel presentations, symposia, workshops, and now, certificate program audiences have now held more than 96,000 practitioners.
She was the first psychologist to be the lead author of a telehealth handbook specializing in mental health.
She is the first psychologist to offer telebehavioral health consultation to traditional behavioral health care groups and academic institutions seeking to develop competency-based telehealth services, as well as international technology companies entering the behavioral arena.
She was the first to spearhead efforts to start a technology-focused division at the American Psychological Association and the American Counseling Association.
She obtained the contract and co-authored the APA’s first book for telemental health best practices.
She also published the first textbook based on published telebehavioral health competencies for graduate schools seeking to offer telehealth coursework to graduate students.
With Cognella as the publisher, she developed this profession’s textbook along with the first digitized graduate course modules for graduate schools.
Maheu was the Committee Chair and lead author of the first published competencies for telemental health and now serves as an expert witness in telehealth-related legal cases.
Maheu is now the Founder, President and CEO of the Coalition for Technology in Behavioral Science (CTiBS).
She is the Founder of the first interprofessional, international journal advocating for the responsible use of technology in behavioral health, the Journal for Technology in Behavioral Science.