Member Involvement in APA

APA President Paul Appelbaum, M.D., responds:

I appreciate the responses from Drs. Godbey, Cannon, and Peyser, and their points are well taken. In particular, many members do feel remote from the diverse activities of APA. And, as Dr. Peyser suggests, that may in part be due to trends well beyond the limits of our organization. How to dispel that sense of distance fully remains perplexing, but clearly better communication with all our members is essential. Jim Krajeski, M.D., editor in chief of Psychiatric News, our new medical director, Jay Scully, M.D., and I have talked about starting a regular medical director’s column that would inform members of the work being done on their behalf by the APA staff. I have thought for a long time that this would be an important link to our members, and I’m pleased that Dr. Scully agrees. APA now also has an e-mail list of 18,000 members, which we have begun to use experimentally. Given the sensitivity that people have to being “spammed,” how best to use the list without annoying our members is an important question. And the APA Web site at <www.psych.org> is now a resource from which press releases, congressional testimony, regulatory changes, resource documents, and other information can be accessed in a timely fashion. All that having been said, however, the point remains: We still have work to do.

As for the focus of many APA leaders on internal reorganization (to which I plead guilty, as well), it is hard for us to remember that the structural issues that seem so important to us are obscure to most members and perhaps sometimes not nearly as critical as we believe. When they are, we have an obligation to explain to the members why, an obligation that I’m afraid we have not always discharged well.

Finally, Dr. Cannon wonders about how much a president of APA can really accomplish in a year, and whether there might be better ways of structuring the office. I will return to those questions in a subsequent column closer to the conclusion of my presidential year. ▪