Candidates for Secretary: Sidney H. Weissman, M.D.
Sidney H. Weissman, M.D.
Private Practice of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis ♦ Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Northwestern University ♦ Past President, Illinois Psychiatric Society ♦ Former Trustee of APA ♦ Former Representative to APA Assembly ♦ Past President, American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training ♦ Past Chair, APA Scientific Program Committees
In the second decade of the 21st century, psychiatry will confront numerous challenges and opportunities. To ensure that quality clinical practice is maintained, psychiatric education is enhanced, research is maintained and expanded, and the public support of psychiatric services is maintained and enhanced, psychiatry needs a strong, focused APA. The strength of APA comes from its members and the ability of its leaders to develop policies and actions to address these challenges and work with the APA members and its district branches to accomplish its goals.
Each challenge has a number of specific goals to which APA must devote its resources:
Clinical Practice
■ Ensure that psychiatric parity is established to reach all citizens.
■ Work to develop a patient care “Bill of Rights.”
■ Ensure patient confidentiality.
■ Maintain vigilance and effective actions in scope-of-practice actions.
Psychiatric Education
■ Enhance and maintain clear standards for residency education.
■ Enhance and maintain clear standards for the maintenance of board certification and licensure.
■ Assist other psychiatric associations in ensuring that regulatory standards developed by others that affect psychiatric education and practice are relevant for psychiatry.
Psychiatric Research
■ Develop strategies to maintain and enhance funding at NIH for NIMH that enhance all areas of psychiatric research.
■ Work with other associations to enhance federal funding for medical research.
■ Provide support to academic departments to enhance research activities.
Psychiatric Services
■ Ensure funding on the federal and state levels to provide adequate psychiatric services for individuals who cannot afford private care.
■ Work with other associations to ensure adequate mental health funding and facilities at the state and federal levels.
Functions of APA Secretary
The secretary of APA has three critical functions. First, the secretary serves as a voting member of the Board of Trustees. Second, the secretary serves on the Board Executive Committee. In these roles, the secretary works with others to develop and implement APA policy. Having served on the Board of Trustees for six years, I have the qualifications to address and shape with our colleagues the responses to the critical issues that confront American psychiatry.
The APA secretary has an additional responsibility. The secretary serves as chair of the APA Conflict of Interest Committee. This committee was created by a Board action in 2010 which developed policies and procedures to be developed and followed in all APA organizational relationships. I had the honor and privilege to serve as chair of the Board committee that developed these policies and procedures, which are now referred to by many as the APA Code of Conduct.
Today I am a psychiatrist in private practice who worked for 40 years in academic psychiatry reaching the rank of professor at two medical schools. I have served as president of psychiatric associations and on the Board of Trustees of a teaching hospital. Voting for me will ensure that we continue to strongly address the issues that are vital to psychiatry.
Primary Professional Activities and Sources of Income
Professional Activities
60%—Private practice of psychiatry
20%—Consultations to varied mental health groups
20%—Academic activities
Income
95%—Private practice
5%—Consultations
