xxAACP Newsletter, Volume 11,
Number 1, Winter 1997
President's Column: The AACP and the APA: Making Our Voices Heard
This is the issue in which we solicit comments from the two candidates for President of the APA. I hope you will find their comments helpful in deciding between two good friends of community psychiatry. Dr. Muņoz, currently APA Secretary, is well known to many community psychiatrists as a strong advocate for the mentally ill and as an inspiration to community psychatrists. Dr. Ayres is a progressive and thoughtful child psychiatrist. As the former president of the AACAP he led that organization in addressing community practice issues.
Our featuring their comments in this newsletter calls for a short review of the relationship between the AACP and the APA. Tha AACP was born of the frustration of our founding members with their public agency issues being poorly represented in the deliberations of the APA. The APA was way too large and so many of its members had other issues which left little energy for our lower priority concerns. We were frustrated with the cumbersome component structure and with the difficulties in addressing issues through the Assembly. There seemed to be no hope that an issue relevant to our practice would survive throught the APA process and emerge as policy.
As a community psychiatry subspecialty organization the AACP was able to give voice to these issues through our Newsletter and in direct communication with the APA. Collectively, four or five hundred psychiarists had some impact on the larger group. We also had great support from those friends in community psychiatry who were active in the APA such as John Talbot and Richard Lamb. We became their great supporters and prime consumers of those functions of the APA they had created and championed. We subscribed to the Hospital and Community Psychiatry journal, now Psychiatric Services, and we became active as presenters and participants in the programs of the APA, particularly the old Institute on Hospital and Community Psychiatry (now IPS). AACP leaders began to have influence on the APA as they pushed for greater recognition of their concerns and a strengthening of the functions of the APA which were most relevant to community practice. This was recently brilliantly realized by the chairmanship of our Board member, Steve Goldfinger , of this year's IPS program in Chicago. We feel that our formal presentations at IPS and the annual APA meetings, as well as the many other presentations by our members, have greatly enhanced continuing education in community psychiatry and has promoted interest in the daunting issues of community practice. Our active liaisons with the Assembly and several relevant committees paid off with the APA adoption of our Standards of Practice in Community Mental Health Centers and later the revised standards for all organized care settings. Two years ago we were one of seven independent organizations asked to be participant observers in the APA Assembly.
For a relatively small organization we have had an unusual amount of influence. This appears to be a direct measure of our knowledge of the issues and our passion for representing our members and their patients among our colleagues in the APA. Our influence has clearly been a function of our being independent and unconstrained.
As the APA faces massive reorganization challenges, shrinking membership and shrinking dollars, the AACP has sought to help the APA analyze how to be more relevant to its members. We have strongly supported the streamlining of the component structure so long as there remains a focus on community practice issues and on the needs of severely and persistently mentally ill individuals. We have been supportive of the APA's effots to manage their budget more effectively so long as they pursue the path of administrative efficiency and do not cut back on services to the members.
Of greatest concern to the AACP currently are signs of faltering support for the Institute on Psychiatric Services, the Psychiatric Services journal and for the Psychiatric Services Resource Center. These functions of the APA are those which are most relevant to community psychiatrists. The Psychiatric Services journal is widely acclaimed for its practical and scientifically excellent articles many of which address the most important concerns regarding community practice. The smaller Psychiatric Services Institute is the most focused, relevant and collegial APA meeting for community psychiatrists. In this election let us take the lead for all of psychiatry in thinking beyond our obsession with managed care and make the health and survival of Psychiatric Services and its various functions a key election issue. Correspond with the candidates for President and all other offices and make clear your support for the functions of the Psychiatric Services section of the APA.
Charles Huffine, MD
President
Back to Winter 1997 Table of Contents