Sessions Offer Interaction With Experts

By Troy L. Thompson II, M.D.

The three full-day sessions and two forums being offered at APA's 1998 Institute on Psychiatric Services will give participants state-of-the-art updates in selected areas and an opportunity to discuss a variety of topics with experts.

Here are brief descriptions of the full-day sessions:

• Psychiatric Aspects of HIV/AIDS Among Women: This session will be cochaired by Francine Cournos, M.D., and Marshall Forstein, M.D., and jointly sponsored by the APA AIDS Project Office and the Columbia University HIV Mental Health Training Project.



• Systems of Care: Future of Child Mental Health: This session will be chaired by Andrés J. Pumariega, M.D., and is cosponsored by the American Association of Community Psychiatrists and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.



• Lives of Lesbians and Gay Men: What You Must Know: This session will be chaired by Daniel E. Fast, M.D., and is cosponsored by the Southern California Psychiatric Society and the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists.

Here are brief descriptions of the two forums:

• Discussion With Members of the APA Board of Trustees. This session will be chaired by APA President Rodrigo A. Muñoz, M.D. Members attending the institute will have an opportunity to discuss topics of interest with Board members. Board members will also discuss some of the issues they believe are of particular importance to psychiatrists and to APA.



• Psychologists' Prescribing Privileges: This session will be chaired by Michelle Riba, M.D., an APA trustee-at-large and a member of the Scientific Program Committee of the Institute on Psychiatric Services. Riba will lead a discussion of the pressures on psychology groups to seek prescription privileges for psychotropic medications. She and other panelists will discuss why they believe it is not in the best interest of psychiatric patients and their families to have nonphysicians evaluate patients who have psychiatric symptoms.

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