Straddling the Millennia: A Great Year

As I write my final column as your president, I am excited about attending the annual meeting. At the end of the meeting, Richard Harding will take on the responsibilities of this office. It has been an interesting, stimulating, exhilarating, and, at times, frustrating experience. The time has passed quickly.

As with many endeavors, when I look back on them, I wonder how in the world I ever was able to achieve them. I underestimated the amount of time I would be away from my family and my private practice. I thought most of the work could be done over weekends and by conference calls. It turned out that it entailed whole weeks at a time and lots of travel. For each of the past two years, I have traveled more than 100,000 miles on one airline with additional miles on others. Most of this travel was domestic. In 2000, I was away from home on APA business 130 days, or 36 percent of the time. Additional time was devoted to the AMA, where I serve in the House of Delegates, and to the California Medical Association, where I recently completed nine years on its Board of Trustees.

In anticipation of taking on this extra APA work, I shrunk my practice down to less than half time. Most of the remaining time during the days, evenings, and weekends has been occupied with APA activities, including a minimum of one conference call each week. This is what Drew Clemens, as an Area Trustee, refers to as his night job. Several factors may have contributed to my spending an unusual amount of time on APA activities this year.

Major turnover with the loss of key staff persons in the governance office combined with our database difficulties made the process of appointing more than 400 members to various components more difficult. In effect, Mike Pearce, the Assembly speaker, governance staff, and I had to develop our own database of members interested in serving on components and manually go through the component book page by page to try to make appropriate appointments—a process Richard Harding and Nada Stotland, the incoming speaker, have been engaged in for several months. The process needs further refinement, but the personnel are familiar with it, and the office is completely staffed with very capable, efficient individuals beginning with Margaret Dewar and Laurie McQueen.

The development and implementation of our new corporate structure on January 1, 2001, with its three subsidiary corporations took significant time. The American Psychiatric Foundation existed previously, but the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education (APIRE) was new, and our journals, books, and newsletter publishing activities were merged into American Psychiatric Publishing Inc. (APPI). In addition to developing and revising their bylaws, the president and president-elect serve on the APIRE and APPI boards.

In keeping with my initial plans, I was pleased to initiate a liaison with the leadership and executive directors of our allied psychiatric organizations. We held our third meeting on May 8, and Richard Harding plans to continue this work next year. I have also been gratified by the hard work of the Committee on Business Relations, even though desirable pilot projects could not be initiated during my term. The committee has arranged a major meeting with business leaders at the Carter Center in June. I am extremely pleased to have initiated the first Committee on the Prevention of Psychiatric Disorders and Promotion of Mental Health.

There are two projects I am disappointed about not being able to bring to fruition: first, meetings with the leadership and executive directors of minority and ethnic psychiatric associations, which Richard and Nada will continue pursuing next year; and second, meetings with pharmaceutical firms to try to constructively modify some of their activities surrounding the annual meeting.

On balance, it has been a great year and a wonderful, unique experience. I appreciate the opportunity to have served as your president. I want to take this occasion to thank the hard-working staff and members for their support and devotion in assisting our patients and our profession. ▪