Public Will Soon Learn More About Psychiatry
Setting the tone for a meeting replete with substantive issues, the director of APA's Office of Communications and Public Affairs (OCPA) presented to APA's Board of Trustees last month a comprehensive and multipronged strategy to advance APA's mission and goals.
The four specific outcomes to be achieved, Lydia Sermons-Ward explained, are to improve the public image of APA and psychiatry in general, improve the way APA coordinates and distributes information, boost the awareness of mental health issues among those who use or could potentially use mental health services, and enhance the public's understanding of the importance of psychiatrists compared with other mental health care clinicians.
The centerpiece of OCPA's communications plan is a national public-awareness campaign to improve understanding of mental illness and psychiatrists' unique skills in treating it.
A key goal of the program, which will cost about $500,000 to implement, is to reduce, through a public-education campaign, the stigma that stubbornly surrounds mental illness and its treatment. The effort is designed to make not only the public, but also policymakers and the media aware of APA's concerns and goals, explained Sermons-Ward, who in June joined APA as director of the OCPA. District branches and state associations will have the opportunity to participate as partners in the project, she said.
A key strategy to achieve the campaign's goals is an extensive media-outreach, advertising, and public-service-announcement effort. This will consist of holding meetings with editors, reporters, and others who can shape coverage of mental health issues and updating APA's list of psychiatry experts trained to deal with the media, with the goals of expanding positive media coverage and raising APA's profile in the media. Much of the campaign will be carried out by the public-relations firm Porter Novelli.
The funds for the new public-relations initiatives were part of APA's 2005 operating budget of approximately $55 million, which the Board passed at the December meeting (see pie charts). Included in the budget is $300,000 to assist district branches in activities related to membership recruitment and retention, public affairs, meetings, and education. Funds will be distributed via a competitive-grant process to be overseen by the Council on Member and District Branch Relations.
Also included in the budget are funds for a new Office of International Affairs and a staff member to support the Council on Global Psychiatry.
On the membership front, the Board voted to offer a 50 percent reduction in their current dues rate for certain retired members. To qualify, members must be aged 70 or older and fully retired from the profession. They will continue to receive all APA benefits. In 2004 APA had about 1,300 dues-paying members aged 70 or above, and their dues billings totaled about $300,000.
The Trustees also agreed to provide a dues rebate to nonmembers who join APA at the annual meeting. They would pay the nonmember registration fee, and once the appropriate district branch approves their membership application, they would receive a rebate of the difference between the registration fee they paid and the lower fee granted to members.
In other actions, the Board voted to
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approve a position statement on diminished responsibility in capital sentencing that puts APA on record as opposing the imposition of a death sentence on offenders who, at the time they committed a crime, “had a severe mental disorder or disability that significantly impaired their capacity to (a) appreciate the nature, consequences, or wrongfulness of their conduct, (b) exercise rational judgment in relation to their conduct, or (c) conform their conduct to the requirements of the law.”
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amend several APA position statements on HIV/AIDS. The changes were technical revisions that add updated statistical data, clinical information, current treatment protocols, or text references to statements on issues addressing confidentiality in outpatient services, occupational HIV exposure, HIV in adolescents, and HIV infection in pregnant women. The Board also approved a new position statement on psychiatric implications of comorbid HIV and hepatitis C infections that includes descriptions of neuropsychiatric complications of and treatments for the disorders.
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accept the report of the Steering Committee to Reduce Disparities in Access to Psychiatric Care, which recommends actions in response to the 2001 report of former Surgeon General David Satcher, M.D., titled“ Mental Health: Race, Culture, and Ethnicity.” A summary of the steering committee's report will appear in the next issue of Psychiatric News.
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allow the Committee on International Medical Graduates (IMGs) to seek outside funding of $20,000 for creation of an “intensive leadership program designed primarily for early career IMG psychiatrists.”
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establish a minority fellowship in gay, lesbian, and bisexual mental health, dependent on obtaining two years of outside funding of approximately $29,000. The American Psychiatric Foundation will assist in obtaining such funding.
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create new corresponding committees in the areas of psychosomatic medicine education, training, and research; access to care and reimbursement; and electronic health records.
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approve a revision to the APA statement on same-sex unions. The statement says that APA “supports the legal recognition of same-sex unions and the associated legal rights, benefits, and responsibilities.” The Board voted to add the phrase “and opposes legal restrictions to those same rights, benefits, and responsibilities.” In addition, last October the Board asked the Joint Reference Committee to have several APA councils and committees draft a position statement on same-sex marriage before its meeting this month.
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recommend that the Residency Review Committee for Psychiatry add to required program requirements that training programs should include a focus on“ cultural diversity that includes race, sex, age, country of origin, sexual orientation, religious/spiritual beliefs, social class, and disability.” The communication also recommends that programs have nondiscrimination policies in place concerning these factors when it comes to recruitment, retention, and development of faculty and trainees.
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approve the addition of six corresponding members to the Committee on Psychiatric Dimensions of Disasters, at least four of whom will be international members.
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endorse three resolutions regarding diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, including substance abuse, in the elderly. The resolutions came from the Council on Aging, which urged that APA support them in preparation for the White House Conference on Aging, scheduled for later this year. Among the resolutions' provisions are a call for “access to affordable and comprehensive mental health and substance abuse services... that are age appropriate, culturally competent, and consumer driven”; expansion of the clinical behavioral health workforce trained to deal specifically with the mental health care needs of the elderly; and a “national campaign to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness, with an emphasis on older adults.”
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add inducements for psychiatry training programs to get all of their residents to join APA. Prior to the change, each program that became eligible for the 100% Club received $100 worth of books from American Psychiatric Publishing Inc. (APPI). With the Board vote, these programs will receive a major APPI textbook for each year that all of their residents are APA members. The program will also receive a framed group photograph of the residents and training director, and a free online subscription to Focus: The Journal of Lifelong Learning in Psychiatry.
A summary of actions from the Board of Trustees' December meeting is posted online at<www.psych.org> under Members Corner. ▪
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Published online: 7 January 2005
Published in print: January 7, 2005
Notes
The APA Board approves a 2005 budget that includes new projects to enhance the public's image of psychiatry, reduce dues for retired members, and establish committees in the area of psychosomatic medicine.
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