PENNSYLVANIA
JULY 2020
P S YC H I AT R I S T NEWSLETTER OF THE PENNSYLVANIA PSYCHIATRIC SOCIETY
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
By Richard R. Silbert, MD, DLFAPA PaPS President
I am honored to serve, over the next 12 months, as your president for the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society, PaPS. However, I never could have imagined this would come at such a stressful time for us, our families, our colleagues and most importantly – our patients. Civil protests over the tragic murder of George Floyd and the pandemic have almost wiped off our radar prior vital concerns that include the opioid epidemic and the tragic rise in completed suicides. I do not doubt that, even more, our professional duties and services will be needed to respond to the increased fears and traumatic responses. Misinformation, miseducation and finding ourselves isolated, seems sadly the norm these days. Seemingly buried under an avalanche of crises, we will need as a Society to continue to attend to what only last year were significant challenges: • S ince I’m part of the large number of psychiatrists either greying or aging, I’m acutely aware we need not only good people with good minds to choose to enter psychiatric residencies, but we must support and facilitate Early Career Psychiatrists’ development to become leaders and educators. •W e must continue to realign our activities in such a manner that our expenses no longer exceed our revenues. And at least a neutral budget will allow us to be good, to do good. Ironically, the pandemic precautions offered us familiarity with less expensive ways to provide meetings for education and advocacy. •W e need to monitor that the yeoman’s work done by Dr. Edelsohn and the professional staff on Maintenance of Certification goes forward. The pandemic precautions add to barriers towards completing what many members saw as questionable and expensive requirements. •O ur committees would welcome and benefit from your participation. Please reach out to your PaPS staff as well as to any one on the executive council to get involved. I remain in awe of how Drs. Certa, Feinberg, Albaugh, Dougherty, Stowell and past PaPS presidents helped Deb Shoemaker and Dawn Losiewicz respond to legislation and government relations, but they need ongoing support and eventual successors. Though it may be a stay at home effort (as of this writing, my county is still red status), I still hope to further our ongoing Society objectives, that is to Engage, Educate, and Advocate. As soon as it’s deemed safe to do so, I hope to travel to and meet local chapter leadership but meanwhile as we’ve become more of a virtual world in our profession, I would welcome calls, emails (silbertrr@upmc.edu or silbertrr@ccbh.com) and internet chats. I sincerely hope you can have an enjoyable summer to mitigate the trying year we have all had.
Richard
