Meet the Candidates for the Assembly's 2000 Election

Education and Training: A.B. degree at Wellesley College (Wellesley Scholar); Medical College of Georgia (M.D., 1973); psychiatric residency at the Medical College of Georgia Hospitals (January 1974-December 1975); transferred to the residency program at Massachusetts Mental Health Center (Harvard) and completed my general residency and a fellowship in child psychiatry (January 1976-June 1978).

Professional Activities: Primarily the private practice of child and adolescent psychiatry in Charleston, S.C. (1978-present); clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina (attending on the adult inpatient unit [1985-86] and adolescent inpatient unit [1989-95]; outpatient supervision of residents and child fellows (1985-99); organization of private psychiatrists by my husband and me to establish the first private, freestanding psychiatric hospital in Charleston (codirector of the adolescent unit; secretary, vice president, and president of the medical staff; member of the board of trustees); attending for an adolescent residential treatment center (1994-present); psychiatric consultant with the Developmental Disabilities Board of Charleston County (1996-present).

APA Activities: MIT member (1976); S.C.P.A. Coastal Chapter (president, 1985-1986); South Carolina Psychiatric Association (DB; DB secretary, vice president, president-elect, president 1991-94); fellow (1986); Assembly deputy representative (1985-92) and representative (1992-99) from South Carolina; Women’s Caucus deputy representative (1999-present); Committee of Friends of APA; Assembly Public and Community Psychiatry Committee; Presidential Initiative Advisory Committee on Psychosocial Rehabilitation of the Severely Psychiatrically Mentally Ill; Private Practice Committee.

Personal Information: Married for 30 years to John Ouzts (general psychiatrist); interests in gardening, gourmet cooking, sewing, music.

As speaker-elect, I would pursue three issues that members have clearly delineated as a high priority.

1. Real internal reorganization involves fiscal responsibility, which means reducing costs equitably for the Board of Trustees, the Assembly, and the components to reallocate funds for APA’s stated priorities. Expenditures must be monitored closely and streamlined to meet priorities and to reduce dues. This reorganization should also give the Assembly, as the elected body of APA and the conduit for the ideas and concerns of members, more responsibility for APA policy decisions. Simplifying our intricate governance structure will permit faster responses to crises and will encourage more member participation.

2. An improved partnership with the local DBs is a necessity because DBs are overwhelmed by funding needs, ethical procedures, and a lack of government-relations expertise at a time when major legislative initiatives are occurring at the state level. DBs need the latitude to innovate in difficult times. Processing DB ideas through the governance more efficiently would achieve a proactive APA agenda and allow DBs to be more actively involved in solutions to problems at the national level. Therefore, to improve the alliance with the DBs, I am committed to (a) providing staff support, (b) sharing revenue,
(c) improving electronic communication, (d) enhancing the role of Area Councils, and (e) expanding state legislative assistance.

3. Increased relevance and responsiveness to members involves reciprocal relevance and communication—the Assembly and APA being relevant to our members and our members being relevant to the Assembly and APA. Our primary mission remains the advocacy and support of quality, ethical, accessible, and nondiscriminatory care for our patients while maintaining support and assistance for our members as they attempt to deliver that care. To accomplish this:

First, we must be inclusive of MITs, ECPs, women, minority members, and IMGs given the changing composition of the membership. The enhancement of the role of the representatives of allied organizations with APA possibly serving as the "umbrella organization" is an important corollary.

Third, we must develop initiatives that actively address the problems with managed care. Psychiatrists should be in charge of both the delivery and management of care in a cost-effective way that does not interfere with the quality of care. As legislative battles shift to the states, we must provide on-site APA staff assistance and funds to support proposed state laws limiting the abuses of managed care in addition to approaches such as public educational activities, improved contacts with employers, legislative efforts, use of the Helpline to collect specific examples of abuse and, if necessary, legal action, and use of the litigation fund. Psychiatrists should be the originators and custodians of psychiatric standards and guidelines that would provide protection to psychiatrists both inside and outside managed care organizations, thus allowing us to combat harmful managed care policies without attacking our psychiatric colleagues working within these systems.

Fourth, we must continue to develop effective legislative and public affairs strategies at the national and state levels to fight for the same issues: patients rights, confidentiality, nondiscrimination, parity, and opposition to nonphysician prescribing.

Meeting these challenges will be exciting and rewarding. My approach to problem solving is to forge coalitions and to build consensus. My style, according to colleagues, is that of quiet competence. I think my ability to listen astutely and respectfully to a variety of viewpoints and then to build a consensus would allow me to accomplish these goals.

My career has immersed me in the major issues and settings of psychiatry: in academia, as director of the consultation-liaison service and then director of psychiatric education at the University of Chicago; in public psychiatry, as medical coordinator for the Illinois Division of Mental Health; in general hospital psychiatry, as chair of the department of psychiatry at a large nonprofit community hospital; and throughout, as a private practitioner. I have nurtured the collaboration with medical colleagues and organizations that is so vital as we reaffirm our medical identity and work together for health care reform.

Starting APA involvement with my large district branch, I served as committee chair, treasurer, and president. I brought together all the mental health professional and consumer groups in my state to form the Illinois Mental Health Forum, a working advocacy coalition that won an APA Public Affairs award. Nationally, I have served on many components, including the Assembly Executive Committee and the Joint Reference Committee, where most APA actions are processed, and as vice chair of the Council on National Affairs, president and Assembly representative of the Women’s Caucus, and chair of the Joint Commission on Public Affairs.

A perennial student, I bolstered my psychodynamic expertise by completing psychoanalytic training and then earned a master’s of public health, specializing in health policy and administration. My training in statistics, health economics, marketing, media, and management informs my work for our Association.

Married before starting medical school, with four daughters born during and after my training, I have combined my domestic and professional careers in all possible configurations, from full-time internship with call every third night to stay-at-home motherhood. While waiting to impose my doting attention on the next generation, I enjoy devoting my energy to my department and APA.

Never has the leadership of the American Psychiatric Association been so crucial to American psychiatrists and their patients. We are the voice of psychiatry in the White House and the Congress, which determine the shape of our health care system; the National Institute of Mental Health, which sets the psychiatric research agenda; the AMA and all of our medical colleagues; the business community, which chooses the health care plans of the employed; the consumer and advocacy groups, which educate the public and represent and support our patients and their families; the religious community, to which most people turn first when suffering psychiatric symptoms; and the media, which bring attention, information—and misinformation—to the public. APA must be the organization that brings together psychiatrists of every subspecialty and type of practice, every age, color, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, country of origin—an organization in which our different perspectives enrich each other rather than pull us apart. Bringing people and ideas together into effective synergy is something I am very good at.

Before I became active in the Assembly a number of years ago, I knew very little about it, and I’m sure many APA members find themselves in the same situation. The Assembly of the American Psychiatric Association is our representative legislative body. Its primary composition is geographic, with representatives elected by each district branch in proportion to its membership, and with single representatives from each of our minority and underrepresented groups and from a number of allied psychiatric subspecialty organizations. It is those Assembly members who will choose the next speaker-elect and to whom all members of APA, as their constituents, can direct their preferences in this election. Any member can also bring to his or her elected representatives suggestions for and comments on Assembly actions.

One of my priorities has been to increase the accessibility of Assembly activities to the district branch leadership and the entire membership of APA. There has been too much post-hoc reporting and not enough prospective involvement. We are working to include on the APA Web site the subjects and evolving texts of action papers that have been submitted for consideration at the November and May Assembly meetings. I have also provided the Assembly with a new resource: a comprehensive report on the status and implementation of all of its own actions for the past five years.

As recorder of the Assembly, I have worked with the speaker, speaker-elect, Area Council leadership, and every member of the Assembly to bring to fruition the clear mandate of the membership of the American Psychiatric Association: to streamline our operations without sacrificing our effectiveness. Through a well-planned, collaborative effort, fully one-fourth of the Assembly budget has been cut, and the Assembly’s elected geographic, minority, and subspecialty representation has been preserved.

Having served in a very wide array of APA elected and appointed positions, I know our staff and our governance. I know what byzantine processes need to be simplified in our organization and how to get things done using those processes while we still have to. I know how to present psychiatry to the public. During my tenure as chair of the Joint Commission on Public Affairs, media coverage of psychiatric issues enjoyed striking improvement. We need to bring that kind of focused message to business leaders, Congress, and state legislators. And I know how to bring APA to you, the members, how to be available, and how to listen. When you call the APA office or visit the APA Web site, you must get a response that demonstrates the fact that APA belongs to you.