Electronic Summer 2024 | Issue 59

President’s Message

By: L. Joy Houston, MD

It is an incredible honor to be writing to you today as the new President of the Illinois Psychiatric Society (IPS). Thank you all for your support and for entrusting me with this role. I joined IPS upon relocating to Illinois nearly four years ago and was blown away by the warm welcome I received. I have been privileged to work with our incredible council members and to serve on our Executive Committee, all of whom have provided excellent guidance and counsel during my journey through the leadership track. I would particularly like to thank Drs. Andrew Lancia and Abdi Tinwalla for their fantastic leadership these past two years. They have set our organization on a course with immense potential to increase access to care and better the lives of the citizens of Illinois.

Since this is the beginning of my year as President, I would like to start by providing some of my background, recapping successes from the last year, and looking forward to our future over the coming year. I would also like to encourage all interested members to consider greater involvement in IPS. Your support and feedback are essential to our growth, and there are many opportunities to become more involved.

I am a native of Mississippi, where I lived and trained for most of my life. I attended Millsaps College for my undergraduate degree in psychology before matriculating to the University of Mississippi School of Medicine for medical school. I remained at the University for my residency training and then joined the faculty, where I served as Associate Program Director and later Program Director for the general psychiatry residency, which was the only psychiatry residency in the state of Mississippi prior to 2021. Running the sole location for psychiatry training in an entire state is a weighty and meaningful responsibility. After nearly a decade in residency leadership, I relocated to Illinois to assume the role of Vice Chair of Education for the Department of Psychiatry at Southern Illinois University (SIU). In addition to my educational work at SIU, I serve in leadership roles for the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry. I also serve on the editorial board for Academic Psychiatry.

This past year has been a successful and productive one under the leadership of Dr. Lancia. He built two task forces to expand IPS’ legislative efforts and move the organization to a position of drafting and sponsoring legislation in addition to our active efforts to monitor and respond to legislation introduced by others. The Collaborative Care task force was successfully able to introduce two sponsored bills to the legislature, HB 5045 and HB 5046. Although these bills were not able to pass, they allowed us the opportunity to educate our legislature regarding the immense potential for collaborative care to increase access to care. This groundwork will be crucial to continuing to champion collaborative care as a means to improve the mental health of our state. The Judicial task force was able to begin crucial review and conversations regarding Illinois’ Mental Health Code. This effort will seek to streamline and update the Code to ensure timely and effective access to care for all patients, particularly those with chronic and severe mental illness.

We have also continued to expand our educational and networking opportunities for members. We hosted the first in-person Women’s Psychiatric Leadership Meeting since prior to the pandemic. We held our first poster competition in conjunction with our annual meeting. Our poster judges were highly impressed by the rigor and dedication of the submissions we received, and we hope the number of submissions will continue to grow. We also honored the first recipient of our Health Equity Anti-Racism Committee’s Carl C. Bell Award. Our virtual series, The Unified Brain: At the Interface of Neurology and Psychiatry, recently concluded. We were able to collaborate with specialists from multiple disciplines to learn about updates in functional disorders, traumatic brain injury, and more.

Our theme for this year’s annual meeting is Extending Our Reach, a fitting follow up to a year that included so many firsts and new initiatives. We will be hosting an Agency Roundtable on June 27. This will provide an opportunity for networking and outreach to representatives from multiple Illinois agencies, including IDHS, HFS, IDPH, and DCFS. We continue to interface with legislators and the community through summer health fairs. We also hope to maintain our title as the APA District Branch with the highest fundraising success during July’s Moore Equity 5K event. We will be adding a second networking event in the fall to increase outreach to our downstate members. Our annual meeting, scheduled for October 5, 2024, will include educational sessions about the Illinois Behavioral Health Workforce Center’s efforts to increase both training of and access to mental health providers of all disciplines in addition to sessions about increasing our psychiatric workforce and our capabilities as psychiatrists. We are especially excited to have APA’s new President, Dr. Ramaswamy Viswanathan, as our keynote speaker for our Awards Dinner. I hope that you will join us for this year’s annual meeting.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the tireless support and dedication of our Executive Director, Kristen Malloy, and our Administrative Coordinator, Meghan Engelbrecht. Their efforts are crucial to supporting the work of our many committees and task forces. I also want to thank all of our dedicated Council members, committee Chairs and members, and APA representatives, both at the regional and national level. IPS’ growing reach is due to your willingness to dedicate your energy and time to our efforts.

There are so many more amazing developments ahead, and I look forward to working with all of you and our new Executive Committee: Dr. Adrienne Adams – President-Elect, Dr. Kimberly Meyer – Treasurer, and Dr. Jasleen Singh – Secretary. Please reach out to myself or Kristen Malloy if you would like to be involved in any of the committees mentioned on the IPS website or if you have any ideas/suggestions/recommendations about how IPS can work to improve the life of our community.

Thank you again for giving me an opportunity to lead this organization. May you have a safe and relaxing summer.