As the annual conference winds down, I think back on the highlights of this years conference. Patrick Kennedy gave a rousing speech about his own experience as a psych patient, about stigma, about how we may be at the turning point, and that it is through our veterans with "invisible wounds" Closed head trauma and PTSD, that may be the impetus to make psychiatric care a part of health care. He also discussed that we need to move to health care from sick care. Most importantly perhaps is that even though we managed to get the mental health care parrity act passed into law (because they needed something to piggyback TARP on) but the regulations have still not been worked out at all, and this was passed in 2008. We need to pressure congress to work out the details of this.
We also had a great keynote presentation by Rosalyn Carter and the efforts she has been involved in over the years to bring mental health forward, and Grace Sills had a great interview about some of the history of nursing in psychiatry from her experience-- says her two biggest regrets looking back were participating in ECT where no anesthesia was used, and insulin coma therapy, but this was the practice at the time.
There were great talks throughout the week too, I heard about using accupressure in psychiatry, The advances in electrical therapy for psychiatry (ECT, TMS, tDCS, VNS, and other electrical procedures (which look pretty exciting for the future.) I heard about many others as well.
If you weren't able to attend, I believe there will be electronic forms available in the future from the conference, I hope you can go through them as well.