The First PsychSIGN Interactive Lecture Series:
Psychotherapy

A PsychSIGN Regions 1 and 2 Combined Regional Conference

The New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute
Saturday September 13, 2008

PowerPoint Presentations below:

On Saturday September 13, 2008, PsychSIGN held a combined Regions 1 & 2 regional conference on the topic of psychotherapy at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. This was the first PsychSIGN meeting ever to be centered around a single topic. The idea of organizing a conference on psychotherapy for medical students was originally suggested to Iman Parhami (MS4 at St. George’s and Region 2 Chair) by Dr. Ronald Rieder, Director of Psychiatry Residency Training at Mt. Sinai.  Iman was quickly sold on the idea of such a conference, given the relative lack of attention that psychotherapy receives in most medical school curricula. Additionally, a recent article in Archives of General Psychiatry highlighting the shrinking role of psychotherapy in psychiatric practices nationwide made this idea for a conference even more timely. [1] Iman sent out a preliminary email to local PsychSIGN members to assess interest and was pleased to discover that 25 students responded positively without even knowing a list of speakers or the time/place for the program. As word of the conference spread, Justin Chen (MS4 at Yale and Region 1 Chair) suggested the potential benefit a collaboration to organize a combined regional conference, especially given the geographical proximity of Region 1 (New England) and Region 2 (New York), and he soon joined Iman as a co-organizer.

The conference was given a boost when the NY Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NYPSI) generously agreed to host the event in their auditorium. Founded in 1911, NYPSI is the oldest psychoanalytic organization in the United States. The APA also graciously agreed to provide a budget for food with the help of the ever-supportive Nancy Delanoche. Since the conference was to be held in NYC, Iman sent out emails to PsychSIGN faculty contacts and residency directors at NY-area medical schools inviting them to participate as speakers. Ultimately, seven speakers were confirmed for the event: Elizabeth Auchincloss MD, Director of Psychiatry Residency Training, Weill-Cornell Medical College; Helen Verdeli PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Education, Columbia University; Michael Devlin MD, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University; Peter Dunn MD Director for Clinical Services, New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; Richard Rosenthal MD, Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center; Ronald Rieder MD, Director of Psychiatry Residency Training, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine; and Dev Thakur MD, Resident in Psychiatry, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. Once the speakers, time, place, and a rough schedule were announced, the student registrations began to flow in. By the eve of the conference, 79 students from medical schools throughout the East Coast and Canada had submitted their online registrations.

On the day of the conference, 61 students were in attendance—not bad for a Saturday morning! They hailed from a wide range of medical schools, including Albany Medical College, Albert Einstein, American University of the Caribbean, Columbia, Cornell, SUNY Downstate, Duke, Philadelphia COM, Harvard, McMaster University in Canada, Mount Sinai, NYCOM, NY Medical College, NYU, St. George’s, Temple, Touro COM, UCONN, Yale, and the Yale School of Nursing. PsychSIGN provided each participant with a folder that included a schedule of events, biosketches of the speakers, a summary of different psychotherapeutic techniques adapted from Up-to-Date, PsychSIGN’s 2008 membership brochure, a conference/speaker evaluation form, and a copy of the Archives of General Psychiatry article that had helped provide the impetus for the conference. APA student membership forms were also available at registration. Iman and Justin were lent a huge helping hand by Hope Cohen-Webb, a student at the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine whose voluntary assistance throughout the day proved invaluable to the two conference organizers!

The program opened with an enthusiastic introduction by Elizabeth Auchincloss MD, Director of Psychiatry Residency Training at Weill-Cornell. She began by tracing psychotherapy’s roots to its origins in exorcism, mesmerism, and hypnotism. She then discussed some of the struggles facing psychotherapy, including cost cutting by managed care and pressures to decrease exposure during residency training. However, she also included the good news that psychotherapy is becoming more of an evidence-based science, with growing support from increasingly sophisticated neuroimaging and other techniques. More good news included the ACGME mandate that residency programs provide adequate training for the different types of psychotherapy. Lastly, she discussed the vital importance of the physician-patient alliance, which in many ways comprises the very basis of psychotherapeutic practice.

The next speaker was Dr. Helen Verdeli PhD from Columbia, who discussed her own research as it pertains to new trends in psychotherapy. She shared some of the fascinating work she has done in Africa on adapting psychotherapeutic practices to resource-poor nations, based on the “overwhelming demand for training and testing of evidence-based psychotherapies by NGOs and academic centers in other areas of the world.” Dr. Verdeli remained on the stage as she was joined by Michael Devlin MD of Columbia for a panel discussion on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and interpersonal therapy (IPT). To help illustrate CBT, Dr. Devlin used a case scenario of a college student with an eating disorder, then discussed how a CBT-trained therapist might approach such a patient. His talk about the history and theoretical basis for CBT was both entertaining and informative. Following Dr. Devlin, Dr. Verdeli gave a presentation on IPT, after which the speakers took questions together.

Just before lunch, the students were treated to a surprise appearance by Deborah Cabaniss MD, Director of Psychotherapy Training at Columbia. Dr Cabaniss is a long-time supporter of PsychSIGN and gave the keynote address on psychotherapy at last year’s national meeting in Washington D.C. In her brief address, she delivered a powerful missive on the importance of psychotherapy training and the joys of practicing psychotherapy. Afterwards, students were invited to have lunch (provided by the APA) and mingle/network with the speakers and their fellow conference participants.

Directly following lunch, Justin Chen gave a PowerPoint presentation about PsychSIGN’s history, mission statement, membership, structure, and goals. He urged students to invigorate their own schools’ psychiatry student interest groups and to get involved in PsychSIGN’s national leadership. Subsequently, Panel 2 began with discussions of traditional psychoanalysis and supportive psychotherapy by Peter Dunn MD and Richard Rosenthal MD, respectively. Dr. Dunn gave an entertaining and free-form discussion of some of his psychoanalytic encounters with patients. Dr. Rosenthal chose a Powerpoint-based approach that was both engaging and incredibly informative, and which helped to stir many in the audience from their post-prandial slumber. With the time remaining, both speakers fielded questions from students, including to what extent different psychotherapeutic modalities can be combined or modified when working with patients in a clinical setting.

The program concluded with a joint talk by Ronald Rieder MD and Dev Thakur MD (PGY-1 at Mount Sinai, who was actually on call the day of the conference and showed up on stage dressed in his white coat) regarding psychotherapy training in residency programs. Dr. Rieder echoed the enthusiasm of previous speakers for the continuing role of psychotherapy in psychiatric practice, and gave practical suggestions regarding how medical students can evaluate which residency programs are supportive of psychotherapy training. Many students felt that this session was the most helpful of the day.

Based on preliminary analysis of the 26 returned conference evaluations, the vast majority of students had positive responses to this program and were very interested in attending similar conferences in the future. The average rating given to the conference as a whole was 4.3/5. Suggestions by participants for future themes included forensic psychiatry, health care policy as it relates to psychiatry, stress reduction in medical school, psychoneuroimmunology, addiction psychiatry, and incorporating behavioral medicine into a non-psychiatric practice. With such a strong showing of medical students on a beautiful Saturday morning in September, the future appears to hold much promise for PsychSIGN in tackling some of these exciting topics and hopefully continuing to expand medical student interest in the field of psychiatry.

Powerpoints:

Dr. Helen Verdeli:

Drs. Ronald Rieder and Dev Thakur:

Schedule of Events: