DATES OF FUTURE
GAP MEETINGS:
2024
April 4–6
Sonesta Hotel
White Plains, New York
November 14–16
Sonesta Hotel
White Plains, New York
America’s Think Tank for Mental Health www.ourgap.org
Message from the President
Greetings all,
GAP OFFICERS:
President
Calvin R. Sumner, M.D. docsumner@gmail.com
President Elect
Robert P. Roca, M.D. rroca2@jhmi.edu
Secretary
Sy A. Saeed, M.D. saeeds@ecu.edu
Treasurer
Gail E. Robinson, M.D. gail.robinson@utoronto.ca
Past President
Lawrence S. Gross, M.D. lgross@usc.edu
Since 1983, I have come to expect that the first day of spring means that soon it will be time for the next semi-annual GAP meeting. I hope you are all planning to join us in White Plains in a week. GAP membership now has up to 238 active members, and many committees will have new members and prospective member guests at this meeting. Our plenary presentation for the upcoming meeting will be by past GAP president John Looney, titled “A Psychiatrist Looks at Tricking: From Benign to Malignant Deceptions.” This will be a special treat to spend a plenary hour with one of our own, discussing the important topic of deception concerning medicine and our work. The Dear Abby Award presentation, originally scheduled during the plenary time at this meeting, has been postponed. I want to take a moment to recognize the very successful GAP initiatives to participate in new channels of communication with our profession and the public. At the recent American College of Psychiatrists meeting, Jack Drescher presented an excellent summary of the GAP organization and the recent GAP experience with the media titled, “Employing Blogs, Op-Eds, and Other Media for Public Mental Health Education.” As of the April 2024 GAP meeting, we will have 35 blog posts in Psychology Today with almost 120,000 views. Psychology Today is a well-regarded and widely read source for information on mental health. Blogs are another avenue to educate the public about mental health conditions, treatment options, and strategies to cope with mental health challenges. Psychiatrists can use blogs to share insights and knowledge with a broader audience than would be possible with traditional academic publishing, which can benefit both the public and the mental health profession. Blogs don’t replace the other important GAP publications, but they are a timely method to broaden the reach of our organization and our work. I encourage all committees and members to consider writing a blog on a topic of interest. Jack is available to help you get started. It hardly seems possible that the two years of my presidential term are coming to an end. I have learned so much in this short time: about GAP, the outstanding GAP members, and myself. Thank you all for your support and dedication to our GAP. Serving as your president has been a great honor and a pleasure.
See you in White Plains.
Calvin R. Sumner, M.D.
President,
Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry P.O. Box 570218 • Dallas, Texas 75357-0218 • 972-613-0985
GAP and Environmental Protection
The PMC Committee has been asked to monitor GAP’s activities as our activities affect our environment.
ACTIONS TO DATE
1. We have started the GAP Forest. Owners of forested land donate the carbon sequestration benefit of their trees. Currently, we have eight to ten times the amount of sequestration to cover our carbon output from flights originating away from the East Coast. We also planted 5,000 trees in 2023 in areas of Appalachia where the original environment is being restored. We will plant 1,000 trees in 2024. PLEASE contribute to the tree planting/ forest fund.
2. We have worked with the hotel to utilize environmentally friendly practices. For example, you will find pitchers of cold water, no plastic water bottles.
3. We have instructed our investment advisor to cull any investments in companies that might hurt the environment.
ACTIONS PLANNED
1. We must encourage east coast members to take the train and share rides. We have updated our website so members can search by city of residence. Please look at that and see if there are people nearby with whom you could share rides. Have fun riding with a member not on your committee.
LITTLE THINGS ADD UP IN A HELPFUL WAY
1. Use a refillable water bottle to avoid using water bottled in plastic.
2. Keep digital notes to avoid using paper.
3. Consider trying the Chef’s vegetarian dishes.
4. Send Suggestions:
If you have other things we could do, please let me know: John.Looney@duke.edu.
Elections
At the April Meeting, we will have an election for officers and board members. The Nominating Committee announces the nominations:
President: Robert Roca
President-Elect: Sy Saeed
Secretary: David Sasso
Treasurer: Gail Robinson
Board of Directors: Ludmila De Faria, Nubia Lluberes, Scot McAfee, and Barbara Schildkrout.
Photos and bios of Board Nominees follow:
LUDMILA V. BARBOSA DE FARIA, MD, DFAPA, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, PSYCHIATRY, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
Dr. Ludmila De Faria is an adult psychiatrist who brings an intersectional perspective (woman, IMG, Latina, training director, educator) to her work in Psychiatry. Her clinical focus is on College Mental health and transitional age youth, and she has a special interest in and works closely with minority populations, increasing access and decreasing mental health disparities among minorities and providing a culturally sensitive environment for patients and trainees. She is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Interim Program Director for the Residency Training for the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Dr. De Faria was born and raised in Brazil, where she received her medical degree from the Universidade de Brasilia, and moved to the United States in 1991 to participate in the competitive William J. Harrington Training Program for Latin America and the Caribbean at Jackson Memorial Hospital/University of Miami, where she stayed for the next 2 decades, as a researcher, resident, and then faculty. Since she joined the University of Florida, she divides her time seeing patients, teaching, and participating in research. She has developed a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion curriculum across the four years of residencytraining and created a Research/DEI elective rotation to foster research and diversity experience in trainees. She has received the Exemplary Teachers Award (continued...)
twice since joining University of Florida (in 2021 and 2023). She is a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and serves as the Chair of the Committee of Women’s Mental Health, and a member of the Psychiatric News Editorial Advisory Board. Dr. De Faria received an APA Presidential Commendation in 2022 for her work with the Committee on Women’s Mental Health, where she strives to use her intersectional lenses to connect people and ideas and raise topics that are important for overlooked groups. In 2023 she received the Jeanne Spurlock Social Justice Award from the Association of Women Psychiatrists and the American Medical Women’s Association INSPIRE Award. She is member of the American College of Psychiatrists and the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry and is part of the Leadership Council for the Florida Psychiatry Society, the Association for Women Psychiatrists, and a founding member of the Association for College Psychiatry.
DR. NUBIA LLUBERES
Born and raised in the Dominican Republic, Dr. Lluberes completed her medical school internal medicine residency training and worked as an internist there. She migrated to the U.S. to pursue psychiatry residency training. Bilingual and bicultural, she is a Double Board-Certified Psychiatrist. Dr. Lluberes trained in general psychiatry at the University of Texas in Houston. She completed additional community and forensic psychiatry fellowships at the University of Pittsburgh, Western Psychiatry Institute and Clinic. She has worked in public health and inpatient psychiatry in underserved/physician shortage areas.
(HCPC), Houston, Texas. Dr. Lluberes joined UTMB CMC in 2020 as the Clinical Director at the TDCJ Wayne Scott (formerly Jester IV) unit and was promoted to Associate Director for Mental Health in November 2022.
Dr. Lluberes is a certified correctional mental health professional (CCHP-MH) by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC). She has served as a psychiatric physician consultant to various penal systems and lectured on various medical/legal and forensic psychiatric topics. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Medical Branch. She enjoys teaching medical student students and other trainees about the nuances of the criminal justice system. In 2016, Dr. Lluberes received the American Psychiatric Association (APA) award “For the Advancement of Minority Mental Health” for raising awareness in underserved minority communities about mental illness. She is a fellow APA (FAPA) member and has served as chairperson for the APA Foundation Diversity Fellowship since 2018. She is also a member of the APA Council of Minority Mental Health. She is passionate about providing care for the most vulnerable patients, the incarcerated mentally ill.
SCOT G. MCAFEE, M.D.
Dr. Lluberes was the past director of mental health services at the Harris County Jail, Houston, Texas, the third-largest county jail in the U.S. She sheltered in place and worked onsite during Hurricane Harvey! She was also the past director of the competency to stand trial restoration treatment program at the Harris County Psychiatric Center
Dr. McAfee graduated magna cum laude from Boston University with a double degree in Biology and Psychology. He is a graduate of New York Medical College, and completed a residency in Adult Psychiatry at St. Vincent’s Hospital, completing his fourth year while serving as the Executive Chief Resident. He then ran the adolescent and young adult inpatient psychiatric unit at St. Vincent’sHospital, until March of 2005 when he was appointed the Director of Residency Training for the General Residency Training Program. After the closure of St. Vincent’s, Dr. McAfee was recruited to Maimonides Medical Center to serve as the Vice Chairman of Education and Residency Training Director, and later served as Chair of the Department. In (continued...)
2018 he returned to residency training as Vice Chair of Education and Residency Training Director at S.U.N.Y. Downstate Health Sciences University. His clinical areas of interest have included prodromal psychotic states, the mental health care of those with chronic medical illnesses and adolescent psychiatry, as well as sexuality and LGBT mental healthcare. He is published in the areas of adolescent diabetes treatment, psychological reactions to 9/11/01, reactions to mass disaster, resident countertransference and patterns of utilization of restraint in inpatient settings, as well as on the use of simulation to teach residents ECT. He is the recipient of the Teacher of the Year award by the Departments of Psychiatry at St. Vincent’s Hospital (2004) and Maimonides (2015), certificates of appreciation from New York Medical College for excellence in medical student teaching (2004 & 2005), the American Psychiatric Association’s Irma Bland award for excellence in resident education (2005), and also the APA‘s Nancy A. Roeske award for excellence in medical student education (2006). In 2004 Dr. McAfee was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, New York Medical College chapter. He is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and of the New York Academy of Medicine. In 2014 he was inducted into the American College of Psychiatrists, he remains active in committee work at the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, and is a former longtime member of the IMG Fellowship selection committee of the Association of American Directors of Psychiatry Residency Training.
I am a clinician who treats long-term patients in my private practice. Having been trained in a psychoanalyticallyoriented residency, I think psycho-dynamically. Added to that, I bring the perspective of a neuropsychiatrist, after spending decades absorbing scientific wisdom from the advancing field of behavioral neurology.
Also, I am a teacher, supervising psychiatry residents and neuropsychiatry fellows. I am a mentor and resource for colleagues around the country whom I have come to know through work on committees of national organizations.
And I am a writer. I have written 2 books about medical diseases that present with psychiatric symptoms. I have contributed numerous articles to Psychiatric Times in which I have shared my excitement about what neurology has to offer psychiatry. In addition, I have published many journal articles and credit GAP with supporting that effort.
More recently I have also begun to see myself as an editor, not only for GAP publications, but also for help with case reports from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Brain/Mind Medicine to a column in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.
Should you vote to elect me to the GAP Board, I would plan to support the sustaining values of this unique organization while also facilitating adaptation to changing times, changing member needs, new technologies, and financial challenges.
“JUST THE FACTS”
College-University of Rochester Medical School-NYU School of Medicine Psychiatry Residency-Tufts, New England Medical Center
BARBARA SCHILDKROUT, MD
Member of GAP since 2010
Chair of the Neuropsychiatry Committee
Member GAP Publications Board and Blog
Subcommittee Harvard Medical School, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, part-time
Department of Psychiatry, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA
The field of psychiatry is complex, and that allows each of us to develop a unique professional identity. Here is how I see myself as a psychiatrist:
Board Certified in Psychiatry, Subspecialty Certification in Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry
Faculty-Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
2000-2019
Faculty-Brigham and Women’s Hospital-2019-present
Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association
Life Fellow of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society
Fellow of the American Neuropsychiatric Association
Member of the American College of Psychiatrists
Past Member of the Board of Directors of the United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties, representing Behavioral Neurology & Neuropsychiatry
Past Co-President of the Boston Society for Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry