Thinking then Doing

"Psychiatrists concerned about the crisis in public mental health services won’t want to miss APA’s 54th Annual Institute on Psychiatric Services - Chicago, October 9-13. The Institute spotlights an array of new, innovative services for the severely ill patient in all settings, from public hospitals to community-based drop in centers. For details and discounted on-line registration, go to http://www.psych.org/sched_events/ips02.

And, boy howdy, do we have crises galore. However, since the basic constitution of public psychiatrists is to be scrappy, creative, and optimistic, I’ll re-frame these times as ‘challenging’. We are all struggling with a variety of issues:

What do we do when our funding is cut? How can we not fight amongst ourselves when the funding pie is getting smaller and smaller, and instead fight who-so-ever’s cutting the pie?

How can we be involved in planning when every spare moment of our workday is spent immersed in clinical care? Which shows there’s not enough of us (public psychiatrists) around to do what we need to do; so how do we recruit good docs to join and stay in our ranks?

How do we best advocate for our constituents? Or maybe we should step aside and let ‘em advocate for themselves. (Like who knows best what "our patients" need?)

How do we get the right treatment to the folks who need it? What is the right treatment? Who should provide it? Who should receive it? How should we give it?

How do we partner with others to maximize system productivity? Hey, what is system productivity and how is it measured? The number of people admitted? The money spent? The number of prescriptions written? The quality of life of consumers and family members?

And what about disaster planning? Is your community ready for something to happen? Are you prepared to help?

Well, it took me just 30 seconds to write that list, and I imagine each of you could come up with your own infinite list of challenges. How do we meet these challenges? Well, we think, and then we do.

Certainly partnering with like-minded folks is a good start. A great example is a recent two-day conference some AACP folks had with the leadership of CMHS to look at public psychiatry’s preparedness to respond to disasters. Wonderfully led by Ken Thompson (AACP) and Mel Haas (CMHS) with NY disaster response leaders (Tony Ng, Paula Panzer, Steve Goldfinger) and APA representation (Al Gaw) and attended by a group of folks intent on product production, by the end of two days we had a do-able action plan. Two days!! Not, let’s meet, and talk and talk and talk, but let’s meet, and talk, and ponder and get consensus and ask some experts and produce and network and get players to promise to DO something. That’s how we public psychiatrists meet these challenges. That’s why we are attracted to public psychiatry. Because we are do-ers (which isn’t to say we aren’t thinkers, we just don’t think and talk something to death before doing something).

So come catch the show in Chicago at the Institute on Psychiatric Services. Register now (and feel free to come to our board meeting (October 9-10) and our reception (October 12)). This is OUR  APA meeting, and attending and participating is a way to do something. It is our way of communicating to the APA that public psychiatry is important. The leadership of the APA hears our concerns; we need to show them, in droves and with our voices, that the concerns of public psychiatry should continue to be important to the APA.

See you there.

Jacqueline Feldman, MD

President, American Association of Community Psychiatrists

jfeldman@uabmc.edu