Psychiatric News January 7, 2005
Volume 40 Number 1
© 2005 American Psychiatric Association
p. 13
Public Will Soon Learn More About Psychiatry
Ken Hausman
The APA Board approves a 2005 budget that includes new projects to
enhance the public's image of psychiatry, reduce dues for retired members, and
establish committees in the area of psychosomatic medicine.
Setting the tone for a meeting replete with substantive issues, the
director of APA's Office of Communications and Public Affairs (OCPA) presented
to APA's Board of Trustees last month a comprehensive and multipronged
strategy to advance APA's mission and goals.
The four specific outcomes to be achieved, Lydia Sermons-Ward explained,
are to improve the public image of APA and psychiatry in general, improve the
way APA coordinates and distributes information, boost the awareness of mental
health issues among those who use or could potentially use mental health
services, and enhance the public's understanding of the importance of
psychiatrists compared with other mental health care clinicians.
The centerpiece of OCPA's communications plan is a national
public-awareness campaign to improve understanding of mental illness and
psychiatrists' unique skills in treating it.
A key goal of the program, which will cost about $500,000 to implement, is
to reduce, through a public-education campaign, the stigma that stubbornly
surrounds mental illness and its treatment. The effort is designed to make not
only the public, but also policymakers and the media aware of APA's concerns
and goals, explained Sermons-Ward, who in June joined APA as director of the
OCPA. District branches and state associations will have the opportunity to
participate as partners in the project, she said.
A key strategy to achieve the campaign's goals is an extensive
media-outreach, advertising, and public-service-announcement effort. This will
consist of holding meetings with editors, reporters, and others who can shape
coverage of mental health issues and updating APA's list of psychiatry experts
trained to deal with the media, with the goals of expanding positive media
coverage and raising APA's profile in the media. Much of the campaign will be
carried out by the public-relations firm Porter Novelli.
The funds for the new public-relations initiatives were part of APA's 2005
operating budget of approximately $55 million, which the Board passed at the
December meeting (see pie charts). Included in the budget is $300,000 to
assist district branches in activities related to membership recruitment and
retention, public affairs, meetings, and education. Funds will be distributed
via a competitive-grant process to be overseen by the Council on Member and
District Branch Relations.
Also included in the budget are funds for a new Office of International
Affairs and a staff member to support the Council on Global Psychiatry.
On the membership front, the Board voted to offer a 50 percent reduction in
their current dues rate for certain retired members. To qualify, members must
be aged 70 or older and fully retired from the profession. They will continue
to receive all APA benefits. In 2004 APA had about 1,300 dues-paying members
aged 70 or above, and their dues billings totaled about $300,000.
The Trustees also agreed to provide a dues rebate to nonmembers who join
APA at the annual meeting. They would pay the nonmember registration fee, and
once the appropriate district branch approves their membership application,
they would receive a rebate of the difference between the registration fee
they paid and the lower fee granted to members.
In other actions, the Board voted to
- approve a position statement on diminished responsibility in capital
sentencing that puts APA on record as opposing the imposition of a death
sentence on offenders who, at the time they committed a crime, "had a
severe mental disorder or disability that significantly impaired their
capacity to (a) appreciate the nature, consequences, or wrongfulness of their
conduct, (b) exercise rational judgment in relation to their conduct, or (c)
conform their conduct to the requirements of the law."
- amend several APA position statements on HIV/AIDS. The changes were
technical revisions that add updated statistical data, clinical information,
current treatment protocols, or text references to statements on issues
addressing confidentiality in outpatient services, occupational HIV exposure,
HIV in adolescents, and HIV infection in pregnant women. The Board also
approved a new position statement on psychiatric implications of comorbid HIV
and hepatitis C infections that includes descriptions of neuropsychiatric
complications of and treatments for the disorders.
- accept the report of the Steering Committee to Reduce Disparities in
Access to Psychiatric Care, which recommends actions in response to the
2001 report of former Surgeon General David Satcher, M.D., titled
"Mental Health: Race, Culture, and Ethnicity." A summary of the
steering committee's report will appear in the next issue of Psychiatric
News.
- allow the Committee on International Medical Graduates (IMGs) to seek
outside funding of $20,000 for creation of an "intensive leadership
program designed primarily for early career IMG psychiatrists."
- establish a minority fellowship in gay, lesbian, and bisexual mental
health, dependent on obtaining two years of outside funding of
approximately $29,000. The American Psychiatric Foundation will assist in
obtaining such funding.
- create new corresponding committees in the areas of psychosomatic
medicine education, training, and research; access to care and reimbursement;
and electronic health records.
- approve a revision to the APA statement on same-sex unions. The
statement says that APA "supports the legal recognition of same-sex
unions and the associated legal rights, benefits, and responsibilities."
The Board voted to add the phrase "and opposes legal restrictions to
those same rights, benefits, and responsibilities." In addition, last
October the Board asked the Joint Reference Committee to have several APA
councils and committees draft a position statement on same-sex marriage before
its meeting this month.
- recommend that the Residency Review Committee for Psychiatry add to
required program requirements that training programs should include a focus on
"cultural diversity that includes race, sex, age, country of origin,
sexual orientation, religious/spiritual beliefs, social class, and
disability." The communication also recommends that programs have
nondiscrimination policies in place concerning these factors when it comes to
recruitment, retention, and development of faculty and trainees.
- approve the addition of six corresponding members to the Committee on
Psychiatric Dimensions of Disasters, at least four of whom will be
international members.
- endorse three resolutions regarding diagnosis and treatment of mental
illness, including substance abuse, in the elderly. The resolutions came
from the Council on Aging, which urged that APA support them in preparation
for the White House Conference on Aging, scheduled for later this year. Among
the resolutions' provisions are a call for "access to affordable and
comprehensive mental health and substance abuse services... that are age
appropriate, culturally competent, and consumer driven"; expansion of
the clinical behavioral health workforce trained to deal specifically with the
mental health care needs of the elderly; and a "national campaign to
reduce the stigma associated with mental illness, with an emphasis on older
adults."
- add inducements for psychiatry training programs to get all of their
residents to join APA. Prior to the change, each program that became
eligible for the 100% Club received $100 worth of books from American
Psychiatric Publishing Inc. (APPI). With the Board vote, these programs will
receive a major APPI textbook for each year that all of their residents are
APA members. The program will also receive a framed group photograph of the
residents and training director, and a free online subscription to Focus:
The Journal of Lifelong Learning in Psychiatry.
A summary of actions from the Board of Trustees' December meeting is
posted online at
<www.psych.org>
under Members Corner. 
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