Dear John,
This past weekend marked an important milestone for the Treatment Advocacy Center and its priorities as long-time TAC board member, Dr. Jeffrey Geller, assumed the presidency of the American Psychiatric Association.
Dr. Geller, a powerful advocate for people with severe mental illness for more than 35 years and a supporter of the Treatment Advocacy Center since its founding, serves as the Facility Medical Director of the Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Hosted as a virtual conference this weekend, the APA Spring Highlights meeting brought together 3,000 APA members to discuss issues vital to the field of psychiatry and those with mental illness.
Dr. Geller’s address opened the event and made clear that issues important to the Treatment Advocacy Center, including psychiatric bed loss, the impact of anosognosia and the need to eliminate the discriminatory IMD exclusion, would be front-and-center during his year-long presidency.
“Our mental health system is in crisis,” Dr. Geller explained, indicating that this in large part because of our nation’s unprecedented loss of inpatient psychiatric beds. In 1955, the United States had one psychiatric bed for every 300 Americans. But by 2004, the number dwindled to just one psychiatric bed for every 3,000 Americans.
Dr. Geller then highlighted the consequences of our system’s failings: criminalization, emergency department boarding, homelessness, suicide and substance use disorders.
His address closed by noting the positive momentum for change on numerous fronts, including advocacy efforts to eliminate the IMD exclusion to support bed creation.
The Treatment Advocacy Center’s board of directors and staff congratulates Dr. Geller on his assuming the APA presidency and look forward to a tenure marked by a strong focus on the needs of those with severe mental illness and the systems that treat them.
Read Dr. Geller’s incoming president’s address here.
Sincerely,
