COVID-19 Colors Opening of APA Virtual Spring Highlights Meeting

The COVID-19 outbreak colored Saturday’s kickoff of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Spring Highlights Meeting, held virtually after the pandemic led to the cancellation of the APA Annual Meeting for only the 5th time in the 175-year-old organization’s history.

The last time the Annual Meeting was cancelled was in 1961, during the outbreak of the Civil War, said chief executive officer and medical director Saul Levin, MD. Previous to that, the meeting was cancelled in 1945, at the end of the World War II.

“We will continue to meet virtually as an organization through the end of this year and will then reassess the status of COVID-19,” Dr. Levin said, “at which point we hope we can gather in person for a full APA Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, California in May of 2021.”

In his Opening Session remarks, he described the outbreak as “the most significant public health emergency of our lifetimes,” and said “as members of the House of Medicine it is incumbent on us to step up and aid in ending this crisis by any way we can add value.”

“As we have seen, the public and all of medicine realize they need our expertise. As psychiatrists we will treat the short-, the mid-, and the long-term ramifications of COVID-19,” Dr. Levin said. “Together we are stronger, and we’ll step up the help our colleagues, the health care system, and the public get through this difficult period.”

Outgoing APA president Bruce Schwartz, MD, who works in hard-hit New York City, said the entire mental health workforce has had to be mobilized to respond to the epidemic.

“An interdisciplinary collaboration was all that allowed us to cope with the health and mental health emergency. We will need this full workforce to cope with the psychiatric effects after this epidemic passes as well,” said Dr. Schwartz, who is professor, deputy chair, and clinical director of psychiatry and behavioral Sciences at Montefiore and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.

Dr. Levin emphasized the importance of keeping health care professionals safe during the response.

“All health care and mental health care professionals who are engaged in treatment should not have to supply their own personal protective equipment (PPE),” he said. “The responsibility of ensuring the safety of the staff must come from the hospital systems and the state and federal government.”

Drs. Levin and Schwartz both noted the challenges facing the field of psychiatry today go well beyond the pandemic.

“We are faced with multiple tragedies in our country, not just coronavirus. Most people with severe mental illness are winding up incarcerated, homeless, or on probation,” Dr. Schwartz said. “The loss of human potential is breathtaking.”

Dr. Levin outlined 7 areas he feels are affecting the psychiatry profession and its patients:

1. Disparities in treatment and access to care for members of minority and underrepresented groups, particularly the African-American, Hispanic and native American populations (who data have shown also have higher rates of COVID-19 mortality);

2. High rates of people with mental illness and substance use disorders being incarcerated instead of diverted into community treatment, including a disproportionately high number of African-American and Hispanic people;

3. Barriers that prevent people from accessing care;

4. The opioid crisis;

5. The need for more research funding for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA);

6. Ending discrimination due to stigma against people with mental health and substance use disorders;

7. The need for true mental health parity and equity.

In this opening remarks, APA president-elect Jeffrey Geller, MD, MPH, professor of psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, addressed crises he said are less noticeable than the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to some of the issues raised by Dr. Levin, he noted the shortage of psychiatric hospital beds available in the United States, high rates of serious mental illness among the homeless population, and rising suicide rates.

“When the COVID-19 crisis has passed, we need to tackle with equal intensity our longstanding crises—health inequities, social marginalization of persons with serious mental illness, and inadequate resources to treat psychiatric patients,” he said. “We know what these resources are, but like PPEs in the COVID pandemic, there just aren’t enough around.”

Dr. Levin expressed hope that the COVID-19 pandemic would lead to opportunities to make changes in the field for the better. “Psychiatry will be faced with many new opportunities and challenges to make history in the coming decade,” he said.

—Terri Airov

Reference

"Opening Session." Presented at: the American Psychiatric Association Spring Highlights Meeting; April 25, 2020.