Cornell Residents Win MindGames Competition

Do you know the name of the American physician who wrote Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind in 1812? Can you name the disability assessment tool recommended in Section III of DSM-5? And who was the rock star who wrote “Nevermind” and who suffered from depression and substance abuse and died by suicide?

Those were just a few of the questions psychiatry residents from three training programs answered during the 2014 MindGames competition at APA’s annual meeting last month. (The answers: 1. Benjamin Rush 2. The World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 [WHODAS 2.0] 3. Kurt Cobain.)

New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center emerged victorious in the “Jeopardy”-like competition, beating the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Texas at Houston. Pictured are (from left) Cornell residents Seth Kleinerman, M.D., Adam Demner, M.D., and Akshay Lohitsa, M.D., with MindGames host Glen Gabbard, M.D., who presented the trophy.

This year’s competition had an added dose of excitement when Cornell and UC San Diego tied after the “Final Jeopardy” round, necessitating an additional round.

Judges for the competition were past APA President Michelle Riba, M.D., Charles Nemeroff, M.D., and Richard Balon, M.D. MindGames is open to all psychiatry residency programs in the United States and Canada. The preliminary online competition begins in February, when teams of three residents take a 60-minute online test together consisting of 100 multiple-choice questions. The questions follow the ABPN Part I content outline, covering both psychiatry and neurology, with a few difficult history-of-psychiatry questions to make it interesting. The finalists are announced in April at the annual meeting of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training. ■