What are you doing with your APA membership these days? Scanning Psych News? Flipping through the green journal when you get a chance? Thinking about attending an APA meeting—some day?

Lots of residents I talk to aren’t quite sure why they are APA members or what membership can do for them. The organization feels distant, and they don’t know how to access what they need from it.

I’d like to offer a list of eight ways I think residents can gain a great deal from their membership and potentially advance their own career at the same time. I’ve listed them in order of time and energy required, from least to most. Further information on most of these items is located on the APA Web site at <www.psych.org>.

• Maximize your membership! APA membership provides significant benefits to all members. Here are some examples for residents: Need some mentoring not available in your department? Get a mentor in your area of interest. Contact your local district branch. Looking for a job? Use the APA Job Bank by calling (888) 884-8242 or clicking on the Job Bank logo on APA’s homepage. If you’re switching training sites, check the Residency Clearinghouse. Got a question but not sure who at APA to ask? Call the APA Answer Center at (888) 35-PSYCH.

• Communicate with other members. Get advice, offer opinions, express your point of view, and even get help with referrals by joining the Member-to-Member list serve. Better still, soon there will be a separate Web site for psychiatry residents and fellows accessible from the APA Web site, including a bulletin board–type feature.

• Get involved with your district branch. Many district branches are eager for resident participation, and local meetings are generally much easier for residents to attend. A district branch for most states is the same as the state society; for example, the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society is the state association in Massachusetts. A few large states are further subdivided into district branches and chapters. New York and California have so many APA members that they have multiple smaller societies, which together form the New York State Psychiatric Association and the California Psychiatric Association, respectively. The district branches then send representatives to the Area Councils. An "Area" is one of seven largely geographic divisions in the U.S. and Canada. For example, Area 5 is the southern United States, including Puerto Rico, as well as members in the military. District branches meet approximately monthly and provide a terrific way to meet potential mentors, employers, and leaders.

• Advocate! Join the Grass-Roots Legislative Network. Invite a staff member from APA’s Division of Government Relations to teach your program’s residents about how to advocate. Don’t sit back while key legislative issues pass you by. Take charge! For more information, contact Heather Whyte at hwhyte@psych.org.

• Attend a national meeting. The two major national meetings sponsored by APA each year are the annual meeting in May and the Institute on Psychiatric Services in October. The former is a huge affair (some would say too huge), with everything from soup to nuts. All the heavyweights are there, and you can feel free to go up and introduce yourself. The institute is a smaller, more intimate meeting, and may be a good choice as a place to start.

Some ideas for financial help to attend the meetings: apply for an APA fellowship; for women, get a travel grant from the APA/Aventis Travel Program (contact Tara McLoughlin at [202] 682-6171 or tara@psych.org); or sign up to audit pharmaceutical-sponsored talks (contact Nancy Delanoche at [202] 682-6126 or ndelanoche@psych.org).

• Apply for an APA cosponsored fellowship. APA, in conjunction with various pharmaceutical companies, has terrific fellowships to promote young leaders within the Association. The Bristol-Myers Squibb Fellowship, for example, targets potential leaders in public sector psychiatry. Many of the fellowship deadlines are in the spring, but the APA Minority Fellowships Program (APA/Center for Mental Health Services and APA/Astra Zeneca fellowships) has a deadline of January 31, 2001, and the Daniel X. Freedman Congressional Fellowship has a deadline of December 15. Click on "Medical Education" on APA’s Web site for further information.

• Get research support. One of APA’s important elements is the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education, or APIRE. APIRE’s goal is to promote research development and in particular to foster young researchers in a wide variety of areas from biological psychiatry to epidemiology. APIRE oversees multiple research programs and grants. In addition, APA has a program for Minority Research Training in Psychiatry funded by the NIMH and the Van Ameringen Foundation/Health Services Research Scholars Program. For more information on APIRE and Minority Research Training, contact Ernesto Guerra at (800) 852-1390 or eguerra@psych.org. For the Health Services Research Program, call (202) 682-6292.

• Hold a political office. There are basically three entities within APA on which residents sit. The first, the Board of Trustees, is the executive branch of the system. Each winter a member-in-training (or resident) is elected to become a trustee-elect, which means he or she can sit on the Board for a year and learn the ropes. The following year, the resident automatically becomes the member-in-training trustee and has a vote on the Board. That is the position I currently hold. Information about the MIT positions is available from Carol Lewis at (202) 682-6063 or clewis@psych.org.

The other two entities are the Assembly Committee of Area MIT (Member-in-Training) Representatives and the Committee of Residents and Fellows (CORF). The "Assembly" is like the House of Representatives: It includes representatives from all the district branches. The Assembly committee is the group of those elected representatives who are resident members. Each APA Area has a resident representative and a deputy representative. The seven members of the CORF are appointed by the president, not elected, but each member also represents an APA Area. More information is available on APA’s Web site.