Child and adolescent psychiatrists with a special interest in psychodynamic psychotherapy have a new opportunity to be recognized for their work in those fields.

Beginning this year, the Norbert and Charlotte Reiger Foundation, a philanthropic organization that supports efforts in child and adolescent psychiatry, will bestow an award on the author or authors of a "clinically based, publishable paper that fosters the development, teaching, and practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy within child and adolescent psychiatry."

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) is partnering with the foundation to select a worthy winner for the new award, the Reiger Award for Psychodynamic Psychotherapy.

AACAP and the foundation are encouraging submissions that "express a novel hypothesis, raise questions about existing theory, provide a review of literature on a particular topic, or illustrate key psychodynamic principles in a case-report format." The papers cannot have been published or presented anywhere else.

The award winner will receive a $4,000 cash award and an additional $1,000 to cover expenses for attending the AACAP annual meeting, where the prize will be presented. Award winners must be AACAP members.

Authors who want their papers to be considered for the Reiger Award should submit the original and four copies to Kayla Pope, Reiger Psychotherapy Award, AACAP, 3615 Wisconsin Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C., 20016-3007. Each copy must have a detachable front page so that reviewers, who are members of AACAP’s Psychotherapy Committee, will not know who the authors are. Papers should be between 20 and 35 double-spaced pages.

The deadline for paper submission is June 1 for the 2001 award. The AACAP journal will review the winning paper and has right of first refusal on its publication.

Norbert Reiger, M.D., for whom the award is named, was a child psychiatrist who emigrated to the U.S. from Austria to escape the Nazis in the late 1930s. He was medical director of the Children’s Treatment Center at California’s Camarillo State Hospital from 1946 to 1968 and gained a reputation as a tireless and forceful advocate on behalf of mentally ill children. He set up the foundation as he neared death.

Additional information about the Reiger Award process is available from Kayla Pope at AACAP by phone at (202) 966-7300 or e-mail at kpope@aacap.org. ▪