A Capital Time: APA Goes to Washington

May is the perfect time of year to visit Washington, D.C., and the nearly 17,500 people who did so to attend APA's 2008 annual meeting enjoyed blue skies, pleasant breezes, and blossoming flowers and trees. Despite the tug of the outdoors, however, attendees stayed inside the huge, nearly new convention center to attend hundreds of sessions on the latest findings in psychiatry and their clinical applications and hear lectures by many of the field's best minds.

This year's theme, which APA President Carolyn Robinowitz, M.D., also selected as the theme of her presidential year, was “Our Voice in Action: Advancing Science, Care, and the Profession.” The theme not only was reflected in scientific sessions, but also had an immediate practical application in the APA Member Center at the Department of Government Relations' booth. Here APA members could put their voice into action by sending advocacy letters to their members of Congress. They also had the option of heading a few blocks southeast of the convention center to bring their message directly to their representatives and senators.

“I have been touched and gratified this year by so many members' response to my theme and my passion—putting their voice into action for our profession and our patients,” said Robinowitz at the meeting's Opening Session. “This is not an easy task [but members'] willingness to put the energy into advocacy brings positive results.” And to APA members who have not yet done so, she urged them to “pledge to engage in at least one—or even just one—advocacy activity.... As the ad goes, 'Just do it.' It will feel good as well as do good.”

Among the highlights of the meeting was the presentation of the William C. Menninger Memorial Convocation Lecture by neurologist and best-selling author Oliver Sacks, M.D. This year's Conversations event, sponsored by the American Psychiatric Foundation, featured Patty Duke, who has done much to help reduce the stigma of mental illness by her courage in being one of the first celebrities to talk publicly about her mental illness. Also, the meeting offered special tracks cosponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Next year's annual meeting heads to the West Coast, to San Francisco—one of the most popular locations for APA's annual meeting. It will be held May 16 to 21. ▪