Board Taps APA Veteran To Be Next Medical Director

Scully noted that he faces several significant challenges as he takes the helm of APA at year’s end. He is ready to face, he said, budget constraints, declining membership, and stress and tension in the central office connected to the relocation of APA headquarters and to the significant restructuring of the central office and APA components.

“Clearly the challenges are to continue to function and improve our service to the field of psychiatry and to our members in a time of budget constraints that are severe,” Scully said. “But I know that we have an extraordinary staff in the central office that is dedicated and talented, so I’m looking forward to working with them to meet these challenges.”

APA is a “great organization,” Scully said, and his primary goal is to make APA “the premiere medical specialty organization” in the United States.

On APA’s declining membership, Scully noted, APA is no different from many other professional societies, perhaps even faring a bit better.

“One aspect that I had hoped to see post–9/11,” Scully said, “particularly from the younger—the X—generation was perhaps some reinvestment in pursuing organizational cohesion. It is an interesting generation, in that they are very invested and highly committed, yet they do not tend to join the old-line organizations.”

He hopes to change that by reinforcing a basic need that he sees in all psychiatrists. Psychiatrists, he feels, have been marginalized in the medical community for so long that even though they are “full-fledged members of medicine,” they are often not perceived as “real doctors.”

Part of the benefit of belonging to APA is that the organization offers collegiality, a place to belong, Scully said.

“APA is that place. APA needs to be filling those needs, but we need to know how to do that better,” he added.

“We offer our members world-class publications and world-class meetings—the best that there are. But you can get that whether you are a member or not. . . .What you get as a member is that sense of collegiality, of belonging to something bigger than yourself.”

Within psychiatry, it is not only patients who feel isolation and stigma, Scully said. “Psychiatrists have been stigmatized also. They have been in medicine; they have been in the media. You know when someone gets a mental illness, they don’t choose that illness. But when someone treats mental illness, that represents a conscious choice. And part of that choice is knowing that you are going to have to deal with certain attitudes and stigma. I honor that choice. And APA honors that choice in supporting all psychiatrists.”

Scully will work with the Board of Trustees, Assembly, and staff to identify ways to give members better value for their dollar.

“Times are tough,” Scully said. “The budget’s tight. But in a sense that’s always the case because you always want to do more than you have the resources to do.”

Thus, Scully plans to work with the Board members in implementing priorities they set in spending and direction. “We’ll help inform them of the consequences for various decisions, and we’ll carry out those decisions. Now in some areas, we’ll still need to grow, even as we cut back in others. In a growing, thriving organization, there’s learning to do. It’s a living thing, an organic thing—hence the root of the term ‘organization’—and therefore highly dynamic. Yes, we need to be more efficient, but above all we must be more effective.”

Since he left APA’s central office in 1996, Scully said that he has gained “tremendous experience.” “I’ve gained more experience in vital areas, having been challenged with ever-increasing responsibilities,” he said. “But I’m not much different than I was—my style is pretty much the same.”

APA is also fundamentally the same, he said.

“The challenges, the tasks, they are still the same as they have always been, since 1844,” he observed. “Service to the mentally ill, through service to the profession—that is APA’s mission. We champion our patients through our members.”

That service, while fundamentally unchanged, is more complex in today’s world, Scully noted, “where you have to do more with less.”

Scully said that he is looking forward to working with what he considers an excellent team. “I’ve been blessed with the people I get to work with,” he said. “I was blessed when I was at APA in its education office, I have been blessed with a great group at South Carolina, and I know that it will be true again, returning to APA.” ▪