Electronic Summer 2023 | Issue 55
APA 2023 Annual Meeting in San Francisco
By: Nik Raju, MD
PGY-4 Psychiatry Resident and Clinical Instructor of Psychiatry
Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science
After four years, the American Psychiatric Association (APA)’s Annual Meeting
returned this year to Moscone Convention Center in downtown San Francisco from
Saturday, May 20 through Wednesday, May 24. The theme for this APA Annual Meeting was - Innovate.
Collaborate. Motivate: Charting the future of mental health. The opening plenary event, educational
sessions, research poster talks, and the booths at the exhibition hall were all well executed to follow the conference’s theme of the future of mental health care.
The opening plenary event featured an inspirational, compelling speech from renowned actress Ashley Judd, who shared her own mental health struggles as well as those of her mother Naomi Judd, who passed away in April 2022 from suicide. As keynote speaker, she emphasized the powerful role psychiatrists can have in advocating for improvements in mental health care throughout the nation. Her keynote talk was preceded by remarks from the outgoing APA president Rebecca Brendel, MD, JD, the incoming APA President Petros Levounis, MD, MA, and APA CEO/Medical Director Saul Levin, MD, MPA. All of these leaders highlighted the transformational role that the COVID-19 pandemic had in raising awareness and increasing demand for psychiatric services, as well as decreasing stigma toward mental health conditions.
Despite the silver-lining progress of increased mental health awareness that occurred as a result of the recent devastating pandemic, we all know that misconceptions and misinformation about mental health conditions remain abound. During his remarks, Dr. Levin introduced a new national educational campaign being deployed by the APA Foundation called “Mental Health Care Works”, whose aim is to encourage Americans to access mental health care before a possible underlying mental health condition worsens to the point of needing emergency psychiatric services. This national campaign will include print, television, and radio public service announcements that will eventually be deployed nation-wide, with pilot campaigns beginning in Baltimore and Raleigh-Durham later this year.
The meeting’s educational sessions catered to a diverse array of interests within the field of psychiatry, from pharmacology and psychodynamic psychotherapy to the role of AI in digital mental health and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) issues within psychiatry. As a resident member of IPS, I found myself wishing I could be at two sessions at once, as many compelling sessions overlapped during the same time slot. IPS’s own Aida Mihajlovic, MD, MS, Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at University of Illinois at Chicago, along with Chicago Medical School/Rosalind Franklin University PGY-1 psychiatry resident Ria Datta, MD, as well as other colleagues and trainees, presented their findings from an original pilot clinical research study on the stigma and barriers to care Ukrainian immigrants face in accessing mental health care in the Chicagoland area - home to one of the largest populations of Ukrainian immigrants outside of Eastern Europe. Other educational sessions were led by nationally renowned psychiatrists, such as Dr. Stephen Stahl (Guide for MAO-I’s So an Effective Treatment Option is Not Lost), Dr. Alan Schatzberg (Anxious and Irritable Endophenotypes of Major Depressive Disorder), Dr. Drew Ramsey and Dr. Uma Naidoo (You Are What You Eat, So Learn About Nutrition), Dr. Allen Francis and Dr. Gregory Fricchione (Catatonia: What Should Psychiatrists Know and Why?), Dr. Mark Rapaport (An Update on Anxiety Disorders and Their Treatment), Dr. Michael Gitlin (Treatment of Bipolar Depression), among countless other presenters. IPS held its own Meet and Greet Event on the afternoon of Sunday, May 21 at the View Lounge on the 39th floor of the San Francisco Marriott Marquis a few blocks down the street from the convention center, and a generous donor paid for free admission for all the conference attendees to the 2023 APA Foundation Benefit dinner gala held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art across the street on Monday, May 22.
Fortunately, for those of us who attended who had to miss sessions that were occurring simultaneously or for those of you who did not get the chance to attend the Annual Meeting and still need CME credits, there is an option to subscribe to the APA 2023 OnDemand bundle for a fee; this package contains recordings of almost all of the educational sessions that are accessible on-demand for two years. Next year’s Annual Meeting will be held in New York City from May 4-8, so hopefully see you all there!
