Prevention Will Be Central Theme of This Year’s IPS Conference

As the APA community prepares to descend on the nation’s capital this October 6 to 9 to attend the 2016 IPS: The Mental Health Services Conference, APA President Maria A. Oquendo, M.D., hopes the meeting can help ignite the conversation on a subject that has been fairly muted in psychiatry: prevention.

“There remains a certain resigned thinking among the public, and even among practitioners, that psychiatric conditions cannot be prevented,” she said. “But in truth we have many avenues by which we can halt, or at least slow down, the trajectories of mental disorders.”

The theme of the meeting, chosen by Oquendo, reflects her passion for this subject: “Implementing Prevention Across Psychiatric Practice.”

As Oquendo elaborated to Psychiatric News, the mental health field has been engaged in preventative practices, but it has been heavily skewed toward preventing negative outcomes—such as suicide, other violence, or institutionalization—in individuals who have already been identified with a mental disorder. As these outcomes have serious consequences for those affected by illness, as well as their family, friends, and communities at large, these types of preventative efforts are essential and will be the subject of many of the sessions at this year’s institute.

Sylvia Atdjian, M.D., for example, will chair a symposium on preventing violence and the need for restraints or seclusion in hospital settings, while Peter Chien, M.D., will lead a workshop on the clinician’s role in preventing suicide in the health care setting.

But Oquendo stressed that such late-stage, or tertiary, prevention should be only one part of a comprehensive prevention strategy.

Psychiatry can benefit from more secondary prevention, which can entail either preventing the onset of secondary symptoms (for example, potential substance use or obesity) in someone newly diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder or treating patients showing subsyndromal levels of illness to delay or soften the impact of full-blown illness.

And though it may seem daunting, even primary mental health prevention—stopping at-risk people from developing a disorder—is possible, she believes, suggesting more support for childrearing practices aimed at mothers dealing with depression or other mental illness as one strategy.

Addressing social risk factors of disease is another area of opportunity, which will be the focus of the symposium “Inside Washington: National Perspectives and Cross-Sector Collaborations for Acting on the Social Determinants of Mental Health,” chaired by Ruth Shim, M.D., M.P.H.

Oquendo noted that the use of the word “collaboration” is important as well. “Prevention is the direction medicine is going in general, and as we psychiatrists think about how we can make a difference in people’s lives, we should think on how we work with other specialties to implement mental health prevention strategies across the board.” ■