Candidates Should Disclose to Electorate

In her column in the July 18 issue, APA President Nada Stotland, M.D., discusses and impressively defends APA where worries about its relationships with the pharmaceutical industry are concerned. APA has moved to operate in a climate of transparency, and Dr. Stotland pointed out that “speakers at our professional meetings and the members of our Board, councils, and committees must complete conflict-of-interest forms.” APA's disclosure requirements are very broad and extend not only to all APA components but to other areas as well. For example, they apply to candidates for APA's offices and authors of studies published in APA's journals.

There is, however, one area where a requirement for full disclosure needs to be instituted—that is, disclosure to the APA electorate of contacts with the pharmaceutical industry or other, similar potential conflicts of interest by the candidates for high APA office, so the electorate will have knowledge on which to base its vote.

These candidates will be representing and leading us, but we do not have robust election campaigns with debates and challenges (we could do it online). All we have are the statements by the candidates published in Psychiatric News and sent out with the ballots. But those statements do not contain such disclosures of potential conflicts of interest. For the most part, the membership as a whole knows little about the candidates otherwise and must rely in great part on e-mails, calls, and letters sent out by associates of the candidates and members of the blocs and organizations to which they belong. Little wonder that we can hardly get even 30 percent of the membership to return the ballots, when decades ago—when the organization was much smaller and more intimate—we had over a 60 percent return.

It seems to me that full disclosure statements by the candidates published in Psychiatric News and sent out with the ballots would help inform the electorate and aid in more knowledgeable voting.