As early as the 1970s, founder and first president of the Association of Women Psychiatrists, Alexandra Symonds, M.D., envisioned an independent organization of women psychiatrists that would stand up for women patients.

"Half of the world is trying to make itself heard," she once wrote, "and we as therapists must listen."

Colleague and longtime friend Ann Ruth Turkel, M.D., recently praised Symonds, who died in 1992, in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. "Her inexhaustible energy, her enthusiasm—which never flagged despite all the difficulties experienced in promoting the cause of women—her creative ideas on how to reach our goals, have encouraged many of us who might not otherwise have had the courage to write and to speak."

Since 1983, the Association of Women Psychiatrists (AWP) has nurtured Symonds’ causes and has, in many ways, seen her efforts come to fruition, but there are still barriers to overcome, and AWP is not ready to coast on its successes.

Though it began with a small core group, the organization now boasts more than 1,000 members from 47 states and five countries, including Lebanon and Argentina. AWP, whose headquarters is in Dallas, offers the following services and benefits to its members:

• Support for advancement of women in psychiatry

• A subscription to a quarterly newsletter

• A membership directory

• Continuing education on women’s health and mental health

• Opportunities for networking

• Numerous awards and fellowships

"AWP changed my life," Leah Dickstein, M.D., told Psychiatric News. "I found confident women role models like Alexandra Symonds, M.D., who was a professional mother to me."

Dickstein, who is a past president of AWP, acknowledges that there is still gender bias in the profession of psychiatry. In fact, she coined the term "Lexan ceiling" as something that hinders the progress of women psychiatrists. Lexan is a bulletproof plastic that causes injury to those who try to break through it. "We need men and women of good conscience to take it down," she said.

Nada Stotland, M.D., another past president of AWP, agreed. For Stotland, who is the speaker-elect of the APA Assembly, seeing certain women break through the ceiling to advance to APA leadership positions—former APA Presidents Carol Nadelson, M.D., Mary Jane England, M.D., and Elissa Benedek, M.D., for example—has been enormously important. Noting that the support of "men of good conscience" is invaluable to AWP, she pointed out that there have been many men who have supported women in their advancement, for example, Martin Symonds, M.D., Alexandra’s husband. He is known as the "honorary founding father" of AWP.

Advocacy for women patients is an important goal of AWP, and Stotland believes this is achieved only when women psychiatrists move forward. "The majority of people who take interest in the issues of a certain group of patients are from that group themselves," she stressed. "When you reach a critical mass of psychiatrists who are interested, you will have a quantum leap in the quality of science and clinical care."

Current AWP President Marian Butterfield, M.D., M.P.H., spoke proudly of one instance where AWP contributed recently to patient advocacy efforts and reached out to women in need.

"We did a project last year, and a report on it ran in Self magazine. I had done a lot of work on sexual-trauma screening and primary care, and gave a lecture at the American Medical Association," said Butterfield. "Self picked up on it and ran a story about the high incidence of sexual trauma in women and the importance that clinicians be aware of the issue."

AWP became a resource for the magazine’s readers, and as a result, took numerous calls from the women and facilitated referrals to AWP members who specialized in sexual trauma.

Like her colleagues, Butterfield sees significant challenges ahead for women psychiatrists and women in the workforce in general. "Crucial issues are equity in salary and opportunity," she stated. Surprisingly, she said, academic departments in psychiatry do not do much better than many of the other specialties in terms of equality. Butterfield also pointed out that many women psychiatrists become parents during residency or in the early stages of their career, and psychiatry departments need to be more accommodating. The involvement of women in research—both as patients and professionals—matters to Butterfield. Together with APA, she strove to bring important research on gender differences in the manifestation of mental illnesses to the foreground. She surmised that this type of research would affect the development of the practice guidelines and DSM-V. In addition, she would like to organize a conference for women psychiatrists who are interested in doing their own research. Another goal is to increase AWP membership by many thousands—no small feat, but the AWP will surely carry on in the spirit of its founder, Alexandra Symonds.

"For women in psychiatry and psychoanalysis, for all women," Turkel wrote in her tribute to Symonds, "she changed the course of history."