PsychSIGN Region 4's co-chairs welcome you to attend the 2008 Region 4 conference in Chicago!

Our regional conference will be taking place this Saturday, November 1, at the downtown Sheraton in Chicago, alongside the annual meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.  PsychSIGN activities are scheduled from 8-12 in order to accommodate participation in the mentorship closing session.  After the final AACAP plenary, we invite you to meet back up for dinner on us.

PsychSIGN Region 4 Regional Conference + + + + +   ~Saturday, November 1, 2008~ in conjunction with the AACAP 55th Annual Meeting Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers 301 E. North Water Street Chicago, IL

  REGISTRATION:

Participation in the PsychSIGN conference will be free of charge, including complimentary breakfast and dinner with your registration.  AACAP registration is also free for medical students.  (The latter is required for the mentoring luncheons.  While you won't need it to attend our PsychSIGN activities, it gives you access to the rest of the convention -- we can get a form set up for you in advance if we know you're coming.)

Limited housing is available if you are considering coming from outside Chicago but do not have a place to stay.

To sign up:  please email Rina Crawford and Ndidi Onyejiaka  PsychSIGNR4@gmail.com

PsychSIGN conference speakers:

Dr. Steven Schlozman will be presenting a talk which ties together ideas in the development of psychiatry, using Tourette's Disorder as a paradigm.  Dr. Schlozman was recognized as a resident for the original paper behind this talk, which he refined over time and published further articles on -- even receiving a letter from Oliver Sacks requesting a copy.  The talk examines the conceptualization of Tourette's over a span of 500 years, looking at changes in the understanding of the syndrome as it tells a story of the history of psychiatry.

            Dr. Schlozman will also describe the current work he is doing on the understanding of educational stigma in mental health education at medical schools -- a project which is an international collaboration with researchers in the UK.  The results may be surprising, and he looks forward to an interactional session in which students can share their own thoughts and perceptions.

Dr. Schlozman is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Lecturer in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He earned his Medical Degree at the Brown-Dartmouth Program in Medicine, and completed his training in general psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and his Child Psychiatry Residency at the MGH/McLean Program in Child Psychiatry. He is currently the Associate Director of Training for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Residency Program at the MGH/McLean Program in Child Psychiatry, and Associate Director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry for Harvard Medical School. Clinically, he works with children, adolescents and adults in both psychotherapeutic and psychopharmacologic treatment settings, and he serves as the pediatric psychiatry consultant to the pediatric transplant unit at the MGH Hospital for Children. His academic work focuses on curriculum reform and educational endeavors at the medical student and post graduate levels, as well as on the psychiatric treatment of medically ill children.

Dr. Carl Bell will offer students a look at the meaning of community psychiatry. The founder of Chicago's Community Mental Health Council and a frequent author on the subject of Black Psychiatry, he will share with students a unique story of bringing services to Chicagoans -- and provide opportunities to view psychiatry from angles not often examined in medical school curricula. In particular, the talk will explore minority perspectives on mental health and on the practice of psychiatry.  For students who missed his appearance at the 2008 APA convention last spring, this interactive session will offer the chance to hear Dr. Bell's unique approach.

Dr. Bell is President & C.E.O., Community Mental Health Council & Foundation, Inc. He is also the Director of Public and Community Psychiatry and a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Bell is a co-Principle Investigator of the Chicago African-American Youth Health Behavior Project and of the Informed Consent in Urban AIDS and Mental Health Research Project, and a collaborator of the Chicago HIV Prevention and Adolescent Mental Health Project (CHAMP) at the University of Illinois. He is editor of Psychiatric Perspectives on Violence: Understanding Causes and Issues in Prevention and Treatment; author of Getting Rid of Rats: Perspectives of a Black Community Psychiatrists; co-author of Suicide and Homicide Among Adolescents and chapters on: "Black Psychiatry" in Mental Health and People of Color; "Black-on-Black Homicide" in Mental Health and Mental Illness Among Black Americans; "Isolated Sleep Paralysis" & "Violence Exposure, Psychological Distress and High Risk Behaviors Among Inner-City High School Students" in Anxiety Disorders in African-Americans; "Is psychoanalytic therapy relevant for public mental health programs" in Controversial Issues in Mental Health; and "Prevention of Black Homicide" in The State of Black America 1995. 

Afternoon AACAP sessions:

12:30 PM-2:00 PM:

Mentorship Program Closing for Medical Students and Trainees

Sponsored by the AACAP Committee on Medical Students, Residents & Early Career Psychiatrists

1:00 PM-4:00 PM:

A variety of Clinical Case Conferences, Clinical Perspectives, and Symposia will be held throughout the afternoon.  Please see the following page for a full schedule and description of each session:

http://aacap.confex.com/aacap/2008/webprogram/meeting.html#Saturday

4:15 PM-5:15 PM:

Saturday Plenary - Memoirs of a Trauma Hunter:  Rooting out the Monsters from Children’s Minds

Lenore C. Terr, M.D.