April 2, 1999

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT: My career has immersed me in the major issues and settings of psychiatric practice: 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, and in general hospital psychiatry as chair of the department of psychiatry at a large nonprofit community hospital-and, throughout, as a private practitioner.

Intense involvement with my district branch (committee chair, treasurer, president) and APA have served to give wider application to the lessons I have learned in practice and to introduce me to a huge, diverse array of colleagues. Among many appointed and elected offices, I have been an APA committee chair, president and Assembly representative of my caucus, a member of the Assembly Executive Committee, and chair of the Joint Commission on Public Affairs.

I also went back to school, to bring academic knowledge, along with my experience, to bear on the problems facing our field. I have just earned my master's of public health, with a concentration in health policy and administration. Now I can embellish my observations about the gaping deficiencies in our health care system with epidemiology and statistics, and apply my studies in mass communication and marketing to getting our points across.

Married before starting medical school, with four daughters born at points along the way, I have combined my domestic and professional careers in all possible configurations, ranging from an internship with call every third night to stay-at-home motherhood. I tried to warp my children so that they would never grow up and leave home, but I failed and have to content myself with visiting them frequently in the course of my APA travels.

CANDIDACY STATEMENT: Despite the turmoil in the American medical care system, there is no calling more gratifying than the profession that allows us to relieve suffering and restore functioning to people with mental illnesses and to be endlessly fascinated by new findings in etiology, diagnosis, and treatment. And, despite our sometime turmoil, there is no organization that supports and defends our profession and our patients like the American Psychiatric Association.

APA, with all its flaws, is perhaps the most democratic and representative medical organization anywhere. Life would be simpler if we had a dictator, but instead, in addition to a central office staff, we have a legislative body, the Assembly, a Board of Trustees, and many component structures working on the whole range of psychiatric issues. The Assembly brings together representatives of geographic, minority, and subspecialty constituencies. APA must be the umbrella under which we all find shelter. From the strength of that shelter, we must fight the partisan politics and greed that threaten to destroy the strengths of our medical care system, and we must insist that our society, the wealthiest on earth, provide care for every suffering human being-care in which each has a voice and a choice. Our challenge now is to streamline ourselves into a strong advocacy force without losing the essence of our democracy or the expertise and perspectives of our increasingly diverse membership. Every APA member must be heard, understood, and represented by our central office staff and our Board, and must feel heard, understood, and represented. And every government official, every member of the public, must know who we are and how important it is that we do what we do.

I bring a number of crucial skills to that challenge. I have worked in most areas of psychiatry:

• in consultation-liaison, at the interface with other branches of medicine,


• directing medical student and resident education in psychiatry,


• in public psychiatry, as medical coordinator for the Illinois Division of Mental Health, and


• leading a department of psychiatry in a large, not-for-profit community medical center, as well as


• carrying on a clinical practice throughout.

I have held leadership positions in several professional organizations and have worked in a wide range of roles in my district branch and APA. In addition to my experience as a member of the Assembly, my role as chair of the Joint Commission on Public Affairs has brought me into close contact with advocacy organizations, the media, the public, the APA staff, and the Board of Trustees. I know how APA works and how to work in and for APA. I know how to run a fair and effective meeting and how to be accountable for results. I have just earned a master's of public health, specializing in health policy and administration, so that I can address our challenges with academic knowledge as well as practical experience.

An effective leader has to understand her constituents' professional challenges in the context of their lives. I have balanced my career with the joys and responsibilities of being a wife and mothering four children, spending a number of years full time with them, and other years rushing out of the office to car pool, making a day's worth of calls while stirring pots on the stove and supervising homework, and writing books and papers and doing APA work after they have gone to bed. Now that they have grown happily up, I have still more commitment and energy for our APA.