This Year’s IPS to Emphasize Prevention, Preparing for Psychiatry’s Future

It was so exciting to hear that that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) made a landmark decision to provide coverage for psychiatric care delivered in the context of collaborative care models. The approval, effective in 2017, is the perfect backdrop for this fall’s IPS: The Mental Health Services Conference. This year’s theme, “Implementing Prevention Across Psychiatric Practice,” sets the tone for the meeting, which will focus on a burgeoning type of excellence in psychiatric care: prevention.

The theme dovetails perfectly with the recent U.S. Preventive Services Task Force report, which underscores the importance of screening for depression. The task force proposes that depression screening should be no different from obtaining patients’ vital signs and that it is pertinent in the care of children, adolescents, pregnant women, adults, and seniors.

And why not? Surely, screening for depression and other psychiatric symptoms is as important as screening for diabetes, obesity, or high blood pressure. In fact, estimates suggest that by 2030, depression will be the number one cause of disability worldwide. Importantly, depression screening is preventive especially when cases among mothers can be identified and treated because such treatment can prevent untoward outcomes in their children.

Over the last years, the IPS conference has become the “Must Attend” APA meeting especially for providers working in public and government mental health agencies that deliver desperately needed care for the challenging psychiatric and behavioral health problems afflicting our communities. This is because the conference gets better every year as we work to learn from our participants about what works and what doesn’t and about topics they would like to see covered. In fact, because of feedback received from members and attendees, this year we will include an exciting new array of topics and tracks. For example, the innovative Medical Director and Administrators Track will provide sessions dealing with the interface of administration, psychiatric practice, legal issues, and delivery of care. Another novel track will cover child and adolescent psychopharmacology and related behavioral health interventions, which practicing community psychiatrists face daily in their clinical activities.

Additional foci for the conference will include quality measures and improvement, the role of technology in delivering mental health services, evidence-based psychotherapies, and, of course, prevention. All this in addition to our well-attended courses in psychopharmacology and integrated primary care for psychiatrists.

We could not have a better venue for this year’s conference: Washington, D.C. This wonderful city provides the perfect setting to bring together experts in the field of community psychiatry, primary care, behavioral health sciences, and public health administration and policymakers. Indeed, participants will not only benefit from the multiple workshops, symposia, and poster presentations offered at the meeting, but they also will have the opportunity to interact with key mental health policymakers. There will be sessions about the Herculean efforts that have resulted in several recent pieces of important legislation on Capitol Hill, and attendees will have the opportunity to discuss the future of public mental health services. Having this meeting in the nation’s capital, where so many of the debates about mental health and prevention take place, will certainly make this year’s IPS one of, if not the best conference for the professional growth of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, primary care providers, administrators, and other behavioral health professionals.

I am especially delighted that this year’s IPS will have the participation of medical students, residents, and our public psychiatry fellows. It is critical to engage these emerging leaders who are the future of our profession and who will shape public psychiatry and behavioral health in the years to come.

Looking forward to seeing you in Washington, D.C.! 

I wish to thank Alvaro Camacho, M.D., a member of the IPS Scientific Program Committee, for his assistance in preparing this article. ■