Foundation Expands APA's Outreach

In addition to APA, members have another organization hard at work for them to make a difference in the lives of people with mental illness and enhance the profession of psychiatry: the American Psychiatric Foundation.

The foundation is the philanthropic and charitable arm of APA. Established in 1991, the foundation seeks to advance public understanding of mental illnesses. It promotes awareness of mental illnesses and the effectiveness of treatment, the importance of early intervention, access to care, and the need for high-quality services and treatment through a combination of grants, programs, research funding, and awards.

The foundation negotiates for funds to support research, fellowship grants, and public-education programs for APA, the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education (APIRE), and its own programs. As a 501(c)3 not-for-profit entity, it raised $5 million in 2007 through grant requests and negotiations with industry for APA, APIRE, and foundation programs.

The foundation's fundraising on behalf of APA focuses on grants for fellowships and supporterships from pharmaceutical companies, Paul Burke, the foundation's executive director, told Psychiatric News. These activities provide revenue to APA as part of the annual meeting and Institute on Psychiatric Services and fellowship experiences to residents that enhance their professional leadership capabilities.

Annual meeting supporterships, like the new Product Theater and the Daily Bulletin, provide funding to support educational activities at the annual meeting and the institute. APA fellowships provide leadership training and career-enhancing opportunities for residents in professional leadership, legislative activities, and leadership in minority mental health issues. These fellowships are supported by restricted grants from a number of pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Janssen, Lilly, Shire, and Wyeth. In 2008 over $380,000 was raised through restricted grant funding by the foundation.

This year, the foundation successfully resurrected the funding for the APA Psychiatric Achievement Awards. (Funding was not available for 2008.) The award recognizes innovators in the field of public mental health. Since 1949 the Achievement Awards have been presented annually to public and community psychiatry programs that offer innovative, outstanding services to people with mental illness and developmental disabilities in both institutional and community settings. Pfizer has provided $82,961 of grant funding for the 2009 awards.

Restricted grants generated by the foundation on behalf of APA have more than tripled since 2000 to approximately $3.5 million a year (note that this is direct support of APA and APIRE and does not include approximately $500,000 in funds received and administered annually by the foundation on behalf of APA and APIRE).

Although the foundation is responsible for the revenue stream associated with grants to fund education and provide meeting funding, it also seeks to build and broaden APA's relationship with key funders, particularly pharmaceutical companies. In doing so, the foundation works to identify areas of mutual concern and foster new ways of collaborating in a positive and appropriate manner. To this end, the Corporate Advisory Council gives the APA leadership and the corporate representatives a forum to discuss issues of mutual interest and concern. As a result, key funders have become more likely to not only provide grant funding to APA but to advertise in APA journals and participate in the APA meetings. The foundation will continue to enhance this unique forum and it value in 2009.

The foundation raised about $2 million for APIRE research projects and fellowships. APIRE research projects are always supported by more than one company. All areas of the research design and faculty selection are made before grants are requested and are controlled by APIRE. Requests for grants are written by APIRE staff in consultation with the foundation and then submitted to potential funders. In 2008 the foundation requested and received $576,000 in funding for APIRE research projects. Support from industry is always acknowledged and appreciated.

APIRE fellowships in research provide industry grants to young researchers to get into their first research project with the guidance of a research mentor and financial support. Studies show that there is a severe shortage of physicians researching severe mental illness. APIRE has four pharmaceutical-funded research fellowships that support more than 25 fellows a year. Many of these fellows go on to a career in research. In 2008 the foundation requested and received $744,000 for fellowships in research.

“I'm most proud of our grants to medical students,” said child psychiatrist Richard Harding, M.D., a professor of clinical neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, who took over as the foundation's president in January 2007. He is also a former APA president.

These Helping Hands Grants, of up to $5,000, go to students who develop and manage mental health service projects, usually for minorities, said Harding. The foundation recently awarded grants to students from the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta to educate disadvantaged youth about mental health. The program also granted funds to Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans to develop a mental health service plan for young people in New Orleans, and to Boston University School of Medicine students to link mental health and educational services.

The program has immediate benefits for the students and for the people they serve, but there is another objective too, said Harding.

“We hope that some of them will go into psychiatry, but even if they don't, their knowledge and ability to deal with psychiatric problems in their patients will be enhanced,” he said.

The foundation also backs five public mental health programs. One,“ Typical or Troubled?,” has provided education about the early warning signs of mental illness in adolescents to 12,000 teachers, counselors, and psychologists in 125 school districts in 27 states in the last five years.

The Partnership for Workplace Mental Health develops alliances with businesses to explain how unrecognized and untreated problems like depression or substance abuse costs billions of dollars in lost work time and productivity.

The foundation is part of the Depression Is Real Coalition, which has produced and distributed print, radio, and television public-service announcements in English and Spanish.

The foundation also supports the Give an Hour program (Psychiatric News, March 7, 2008), which enrolls volunteer psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other professionals to provide an hour a week in counseling free of charge for up to a year to military service personnel and their families.

The foundation recently began Community Connections, featuring speakers from APA, local universities, and community organizations who hold town hall–style meetings to educate targeted communities about mental illness. Using nonmedical settings lessens stigma, and events have been held in cooperation with African-American churches in Memphis and a largely white, military community in Columbia, S.C.

Harding said that he would like to see an increase in the number and percentage of members who contribute to the foundation. Only about 1.6 percent of APA members contributed funds in 2007, representing 6 percent of the foundation's revenues.

In a new area of development, the foundation has just signed an agreement with New York public broadcasting station WLIW to expand distribution of a television program on mental health through national syndication across the Public Broadcasting System. The foundation has been working closely with APA member Jeffrey Borenstein, M.D., to collaborate on the production of three episodes of the current “Healthy Minds” season, which Borenstein has hosted for the past two years.

“The agreement represents an innovative collaboration between the foundation, APA's Office of Communications and Public Affairs, and PBS,” said Burke. APA leaders may be featured on the program, and the show's Web site will include links to the APA and foundation Web sites. Expansion to the full PBS network could expose the program to up to 39 million viewers.

The “Healthy Minds” collaboration is just one way that the foundation fills its mandate to advance public understanding that mental illnesses are real and can be effectively treated, said Burke. Broadcast of the three episodes was scheduled to begin in late February.

More information about the foundation, including how to make a donation, is posted at<www.psychfoundation.org>.▪