Candidates for Area 2 Trustee

Area 2 Trustee, APA Board of Trustees, 2002-

Regional Director of Psychiatry, Elmhurst and Queens Hospital, New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, 1990-

Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, 1990-

Private Practice Psychotherapy and Psychopharmacology in Manhattan, 1978-

Representative, New York County District Branch, APA Assembly, 1995-2002

Treasurer, New York State Psychiatric Association, 1998-2002

As your Area 2 trustee for the past three years, it has been my privilege and my pleasure to represent you on the APA Board. While many challenges to our profession and our patients are being aggressively met by our APA, much more still needs to be done. Each and every psychiatrist needs to be involved if we are to reach our goals.

Effective advocacy for our patients and our profession is essential and never ending. We need to manage managed care, ensure truly equal access to psychiatric services whether in a private office or a public setting, develop a system of care that treats and supports our chronically ill patients throughout the lifetime of their illness, ensure enough psychiatrists to do the job, and lobby for the dollars to accomplish these goals. APA's white paper titled “The Vision for a Mental Health System” outlines these goals. I was a member of the task force to actuate and prioritize the vision objectives and set a clear course of action for APA advocacy in the coming years. APA must choose to focus its efforts and dollars on critical advocacy issues.

Advocacy also requires making effective coalitions, lobbying state and national leaders, and bringing more APA members into an active role. As the New York County District Branch legislative representative and chair of the citywide legislative brunch, I have had the opportunity to lobby national, state, and local legislators on issues critical to our profession such as scope of practice, including licensing of psychoanalysts, preventing overregulation of ECT, parity, and patient confidentiality. I have enjoyed joining with early career psychiatrists and members-in-training in this exciting advocacy work. As a board member of the Mental Health Association of New York City, I have learned the value of working with patient-centered advocacy groups for our mutual goals.

The above goals cannot be achieved without a vibrant and involved APA membership. Membership recruitment and retention need to focus on members-in-training, early career psychiatrists, minority and underrepresented psychiatrists, and those who are international medical graduates. The diversity of psychiatrists has to be reflected in APA membership and leadership. I was pleased to co-chair a component workshop at the national meeting focused on more effective communication between the district branches, state associations, and the national APA. As a member of the information technology task force, I have been working to ensure that the new association management system for APA will be user friendly to members and district branches. In addition APA must take a new look at its dues structure, particularly discounts for early career psychiatrists. Timely and effective communication among New York psychiatrists, all our district branches, and the national APA is a major task of an Area trustee.

The fiscal stability of APA has been greatly improved over the past three years. The budget is balanced, and surplus dollars have been targeted to replenish our previously dwindling financial reserves. A major priority of the Board must continue to be a financially healthy association that will be able to support the needed initiatives as we move into the future.

Last, but certainly not least, APA's role as a leader in psychiatric education, research, and workforce development must be enhanced. Increased advocacy efforts need to be directed to obtain federal support for training in needed specialties, as well as easing of visa and residency restrictions for psychiatrists who have trained here and provided critically necessary care to our patients.

I ask for your support and your help to continue this vital work for our patients and our profession.