 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
They are among the brightest lights in the field of psychiatry-those psychiatrists who have consistently performed above and beyond the call of duty in service to patients and their families, colleagues, medical students, and residents and in pushing the edge of psychiatric science.
Each year APA honors a handful of these remarkable men and women by inviting them to participate in APA's Distinguished Psychiatrist Lecture Series at APA's annual meeting. The honorees at this year's annual meeting in Toronto are Leah J. Dickstein, M.D., Maurice Dongier, M.D., Paul E. Garfinkel, M.D., and Charles O'Brien, M.D., Ph.D.
Dickstein is a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. She is also associate dean for faculty and student advocacy, associate chair for academic affairs, and director of the Division of Attitudinal and Behavioral Medicine and Arts in Medicine Program. Dickstein has been active in APA at both the local and national levels, including serving as vice president from 1991 to 1993 and chair of the Scientific Program Committee for the 1995 annual meeting in New York. She has also served as the 1992-93 president of the American Medical Women's Association.
Dickstein will receive the Alexandra Symonds Award from APA and the Association of Women Psychiatrists for her outstanding work in training women psychiatrists. Her lecture is titled "Dr. Alexandra Symonds' Legacy of Advancing Women Psychiatrists and Promoting Women's Mental Health: Sailing Toward the Next Millennium."
Symonds was the first president of the Association of Women Psychiatrists and pioneered a number of programs and processes to advance professional opportunities for women psychiatrists. The award is funded by a grant from Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories.
Maurice Dongier, M.D., was born and educated in France. He is the former chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of Liège, Belgium, and McGill University, Montreal, and is now involved full time in clinical research in the field of alcoholism and addictions.
The title of his lecture is "The Convergence of Psychodynamics and Neurobiology." Over the past few decades, says Dongier, it has become clearer that psychodynamics and cerebral physiology have converged more than diverged. Psychic reality, fantasy life, and anxiogenic conflicts can be simultaneously observed by their subjective and objective facets. The very core of psychiatric research, he believes, goes beyond current psychiatric nosology and explores the convergences of psychodynamics and neurobiology and their mechanisms.
Paul E. Garfinkel, M.D., is professor and chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and president and psychiatrist in chief of the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry. He is a clinician, administrator, and researcher who has a received grant support for investigations in a variety of fields, including affective disorders, schizophrenia, and stress. He is particularly well known for his clinical and research expertise in the field of eating disorders. He is the author of Anorexia Nervosa: A Multidimensional Perspective and has edited seven other books in the field, as well as written articles for journals.
Garfinkel's lecture is titled "Integrating New Knowledge in Treating the Eating Disorders." The new level of understanding in the area of eating disorders has helped develop effective treatments that include supportive care from the physician and group psychoeducation; intensive psychotherapy, CBT, IPT, or dynamic psychotherapy; family therapy; inpatient treatment; intensive day programs; and medication. Garfinkel will discuss the evidence indicating their efficacy and patient outcome.
Charles O'Brien, M.D., Ph.D., is chief of psychiatry at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center, professor and vice chair of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, and director of its Center for Studies of Addiction. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. His research group has been responsible for numerous discoveries that have improved treatment for addictive disorders.
O'Brien's lecture is titled "The Surprising Efficacy of Treatment for Addictive Disorders." O'Brien will review data showing that treatment of addiction is comparable in efficacy to that for other mental and chronic physical disorders. Unfortunately, there is a natural tendency to think of detoxification as a treatment for addiction, but this does nothing for the underlying "lesion," which can be compared with a memory trace. Modern treatments, says O'Brien, focus on the prevention of relapse using combinations of medications and behavioral approaches.
The date, time, and location of these lectures will be published in the annual meeting program book.