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Board Tackles Communication, Access-to-Care Issues

There is no lack of depictions of psychiatrists and their patients in entertainment and more sober media. What has been missing in these portrayals is accuracy. APA is building a strategy to make sure that such accuracy accompanies future portrayals.

The APA Board of Trustees voted at its December meeting to allocate substantial funds in the 2007 budget to implement a major upgrade of the Association's communication and public affairs initiatives. The vote came on a report from an ad hoc work group of the Board whose charge was to develop recommendations for strategies to improve the way APA gets its message across to the general public and the media. The goal is for APA to become more proactive in its efforts to provide an accurate portrait of psychiatrists, their patients, and the treatments available to fight mental illness, a depiction that the general public does not often see.

Among the projects approved are the following:

• increasing the amount of training APA provides to members in working with print and electronic media, including conducting media-training sessions in each APA Area at least once every three years,
  
• developing measures to assess how well APA communications efforts are achieving their goals,
  
• conducting regular "customer satisfaction" surveys of APA members, district branch staff, and members of the media,
  
• starting weekly podcasts that spotlight APA members addressing timely issues,
  
• making online advertising of APA on the popular Google and Yahoo Web sites an ongoing activity,
  
• launching an initiative to monitor and rapidly respond to antipsychiatry statements by Scientology and other groups that portray psychiatry in a negative light,
  
• conducting at least one media briefing per year and resissuing a well-received public-service announcement on suicide.
  

The Board approved $467,000 in new funding for these and other communications and public affairs initiatives as part of its approval of APA's 2007 operating budget of approximately $56 million. The budget also includes $600,000 that is to go into APA's reserve funds, along with any surplus not designated for a specific use. In other actions the Board

• reaffirmed its support of the effort to have the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM-V, incorporate issues addressing the way cultural concerns could influence the diagnosis of mental illnesses. The Board heard a presentation and update from David Kupfer, M.D., and Darrel Regier, M.D., co-chairs of the DSM-V Task Force, in which they stressed that part of the charge to all the work groups contributing to the revision is to make sure that attention is paid to "cross-cultural sensitivity" from a scientific standpoint. The focus will be on cultural expression of symptoms and culture-bound syndromes primarily in the United States, they said, but the fact that the manual will be used throughout the world will also be a consideration.
  Information about the revision's development process is posted at <www.dsm5.org>.
  
• approved the second edition of the Practice Guideline for the Treatment of Patients With Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias of Late Life. The Assembly gave its O.K. to the revision at its November 2006 meeting.
  
• backed an Assembly resolution that expresses APA's appreciation for the work done by psychiatrists in the military on behalf of U.S. armed forces members and their families.
  
• approved a series of strategies to address psychiatric needs in rural and urban areas that are considered underserved because they do not have sufficient mental health resources to meet the need for mental health services. These strategies were contained in a report by a task force appointed by past APA President Steven Sharfstein, M.D., and chaired by Vice President Nada Stotland, M.D.
  

Among the strategies are producing guides and Web-based resources for psychiatrists practicing in underserved areas and for state and federal officials who develop policies related to mental health care; developing agendas that APA can use in advocacy efforts with legislative, regulatory, and private-sector organizations; providing technical support to district branches and members trying to address issues pertinent to practice in underserved areas; and enhancing partnerships on this topic with primary-care groups, which provide most of the mental health care in these areas.

• appointed a work group to develop a report on how quality measures, particularly pay-for-performance plans, could impact psychiatrists. Members of APA's delegation to the AMA and members of the APA Council on Quality Care comprise the group, which is to report to the Board in March.
  
• heard reports from ad hoc work groups studying APA's relationship with commercial entities, ways to improve access to psychiatric care, and strategies for passing parity legislation. The Board approved a motion included in the report on parity strategies calling on APA staff to develop a "strategy and budget designed to maximize [APA's] impact on the passage of parity legislation at the federal level during the upcoming congressional session."
  
• opposed the appointment of Dr. Eric Keroack as director of family planning in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) because of his vocal opposition to such family-planning options as contraception and his advocacy of abstinence as the only legitimate birth-control method before marriage. His was a Bush administration political appointment that did not need congressional approval. His job entails advising the HHS secretary on reproductive health, teen pregnancy, and other related matters.
  
• endorsed an Assembly action paper that opposes "attacks on academic freedom, intellectual exchange, and the possibility of dialogue on the basis of political, ethical, racial, religious, or gender affiliation." The Assembly action arose from a concern about a proposed boycott of "individuals and institutions that do not publicly dissociate themselves from Israel's policies regarding the Palestinians." The boycott threat was raised last year by a professional group representing British university professors.
  

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. L. Knoll IV The Recurrence of an Illusion: The Concept of "Evil" in Forensic Psychiatry J Am Acad Psychiatry Law, March 1, 2008; 36(1): 105 - 116. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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