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| Subscribe to Clinical Compass™ | VOLUME 2, ISSUE 12 - JUNE 5, 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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FROM THE CLINICAL KNOWLEDGE CENTER Highlights from the 160th Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association by Jill Shuman, MS, ELS CME Outfitters was well represented at the 160th Annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in San Diego, CA, May 19-24, 2007. In addition to having been selected as the educational partner in the management of five APA industry-supported symposia, the staff also attended scientific sessions, clinical forums, and new research presentations that explored a wide array of topics ranging from suicide prevention to the spiritual roots of psychiatry to accessibility of care. In his address to the meeting attendees, outgoing APA President Pedro Ruiz, MD reflected on the theme of this year's meeting—"Addressing Patient Needs: Access, Parity, and Humane Care." Dr. Ruiz urged attendees to advocate for mental health services for all in order to provide "full and comprehensive parity of psychiatric care to those who are still living in the shadows—whether in this country or any part of the world." One of the more compelling initiatives of this year's meeting was the second annual collaboration between APA and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which resulted in a special research-based program track—The Science of Addiction: Translating New Insights Into Better Psychiatric Practice. This dual-supported track featured lectures on addiction-related topics such as the neurobiology of free will and the role of stress and genetics in the addiction process. According to APA and NIDA, this ongoing collaboration is designed to fuel the growing momentum needed to raise awareness of and address emerging issues in addiction and mental illness and highlights the need for practitioners to identify and treat both conditions. This theme was reiterated in a symposium organized by CME Outfitters that examined the relationship between nicotine addiction and psychiatric illness. This collaborative APA/NIDA track featured 21 interactive workshops, lectures, and symposia that covered gene-environment interactions as well as stress responsivity, obesity and brain imaging, methamphetamine abuse, and promising new approaches to substance abuse treatment. Other sessions addressed vital questions such as the directionality of comorbid drug abuse and other psychiatric disorders and how to best meet drug abuse treatment needs in the criminal justice system. The variety of information presented offered participants new insights into common risk factors and potential treatments for multiple disorders. Nora Volkow, MD, NIDA Director, spoke about the neurobiology of free will in addictive disorders and the resulting need to design multipronged therapies for treating addictive disorders. Her lecture examined how it is possible for people to lose the ability to control their behavior, even when that behavior, such as taking drugs, can have catastrophic results. According to Volkow in an interview with APA, "Psychiatrists need to realize the different fundamental processes [that] are involved in the symptoms and behavioral presentation of drug addiction. Then, when they see a patient, they can evaluate these processes and get a sense of how disruptive they really are." Dr. Volkow also chaired a forum called "Substance Abuse in Your Patients: Beyond What is Taught in Your Residency," designed to help clinicians recognize and diagnose addiction disorders. Herbert Kleber, MD of Columbia University led a symposium that focused on choosing the right treatments for commonly abused drugs—including cocaine, marijuana and club drugs, opioids—and comorbid conditions, such as depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and schizoaffective illnesses. One presentation in this symposium focused specifically on the integration of psychosocial interventions with medications to treat substance dependence. Another symposium highlighted the health and substance abuse treatment services offered to drug-involved offenders within the criminal justice system, identified novel treatment modalities, and provided an overview of clinical and ethical issues related to the practice of psychopharmacology in the prison setting. Other NIDA researchers chaired panels that examined whether prenatal exposure to nicotine causes developmental vulnerabilities, highlighted innovations in treating adolescent substance abuse disorders, and explored promising treatment options for the treatment of cocaine and opiate addiction. On Tuesday, May 22, A. John Rush, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Vice Chair in the Department of Clinical Science at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas), was honored by APA with the 2007 Award for Research in Psychiatry. This award recognizes a body of work or a lifetime contribution that has had a major impact to the field; Dr. Rush was acknowledged for his more than 30 years of research efforts on behalf of patients and clinicians. In his award lecture, What Patients and Clinicians Need to Know: The Case for Patient-Focused Research, Rush highlighted the importance of patient-centered research, sometimes called T-2 translational research. According to Rush, this type of research is the "second piece" of information derived from clinical data and can help to fill in the gaps between the research data and what practitioners need to know about treating a wide variety of patients in the real world. His lecture focused on the need to provide more information to clinicians and patients about the nuances and broad-based applications of emerging treatments. Please join CME Outfitters in congratulating Dr. Rush for his life-long commitment to psychiatry and patient care! Do you have feedback for the author? Click here to send us an email. |
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| ©2007 CME Outfitters, LLC |
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