Buffet Breakfast

Medical Student Breakfast Meeting 

OPPA Annual Business Meeting and Installation of Officers

Welcome and Opening Remarks - Awais Aftab, MD and Karen Jacobs, DO, 2025 Program Co-Chairs

Paradigm Shifts and Seismic Changes in Psychiatry Since the OPPA was Founded 75 Years Ago

Henry Nasrallah, MD, DLFAPA | Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology and Neuroscience, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine

No medical specialty has undergone as dramatic a transformation as psychiatry since the OPPA was founded in 1950. Here is an overview of major changes:

• From Freudian theoretical dominance to empirical neurobiology
• From non-existent diagnostic system to DSM schemas
• From lifetime institutionalization and lack of treatment to myriad pharmacological and neuromodulation therapies.
• From total ignorance about brain changes in psychiatric disorders to advanced structural and functional neuroimaging techniques
• From guesswork about heritability of mental illness to molecular neurogenetics, GWAS, risk genes, CNVs, mutations and epigenetics
• From behavioral changes in psychotic and mood disorders to cortical and synaptic neuroplasticity
• From psychodynamic jargon to neuroscience terminology
• From 1 board certification to 6
• From theory-based psychodynamic psychotherapy to evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy
• From intense stigma of mental illness to increased understanding and less stigma
• From physician prescribing to nurses and psychologists prescribing
• From clinical "hunches" to biomarkers and precision psychiatry

The evolution of psychiatry as a medical and scientific discipline will continue unabated. Psychiatrists will morph into behavioral neuroscientists at the OPPA’s 100th anniversary!

Break / Visit Exhibits

Pathways to Success: Inspiring Insights

Marketa Wills, MD, MBA, FAPA | CEO and Medical Director, American Psychiatric Association

Success often follows a path paved with dedication, resilience, and the willingness to embrace challenges. Dr. Marketa Wills, the CEO and Medical Director of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), epitomizes this journey. Her story is not just about personal achievement but also about the broader impact she has made on mental health care and leadership in the medical field. Dr. Wills's journey to success is a testament to the power of education, resilience, leadership, and advocacy. Her story inspires others to pursue their passions, overcome challenges, and make a meaningful impact in their chosen fields. As she continues to lead the APA with vision and compassion, her legacy serves as a beacon for future generations of mental health professionals.

What’s new with the old? An update on emerging research in
Older-age Bipolar Disorder (OABD)

Martha Sajatovic, MD, DLFAPA | 

Older Age Bipolar Disorder (OABD) refers to patients with bipolar disorder (BD) aged 50 and over.  Give rapid and unprecedented changes in global demographics, there has been increasing attention paid to expanding the limited evidence base on epidemiology, assessment recommendations and understanding therapeutic options for this highly vulnerable group of patients. OABD represents a complex subgroup of BD, with a distinct clinical phenotype including poor physical health and impaired cognitive functioning, all limiting and complicating treatment and recovery. Within the OABD “umbrella” are individuals who have onset of illness in young adulthood (the most common age of onset) as well as those who have illness onset later in life. Research on OABD has been scarce, prohibiting evidence-based guidelines tailored specifically to OABD across the globe.  Newer research, including recent findings from the Global Aging & Geriatric Experiments in Bipolar Disorder (GAGE-BD) project will be presented in order to provide a better understanding of BD across the life-span.

Lunch / Visit Exhibits

Jeopardy

Break / Visit Exhibits

School Shooters: Troubled Teens or Cold Blooded Killers?

Phillip Resnick, MD, DLFAPA | Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University

School shootings have increased sharply in the last few years. The goal of this presentation is to help psychiatrists recognize potential school shooters in their own practice and to improve their skills in assessing students who have made threats to attack schools. Participants will learn to identify red flags for high risk .Prevention by schools of these tragedies will also be discussed.

Break / Visit Exhibits

Bringing Improvisation to Life: Experiences to Build Resilience, Address Loneliness, and Enhance our Curiosity and Everyday Experience

Jeff Katzman, MD | Director of Education, Silver Hill Hospital; Director, Silver Hill Academy of Research and Education (SHARE); Professor Adjunct, Yale Department of Psychiatry; Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico, Department of Psychiatry

We live amidst an epidemic of loneliness and many in our world feel disconnected. Loneliness correlates with multiple medical and psychiatric presentations and is often a clinical challenge. Simultaneously, many clinicians themselves feel burned out and overwhelmed, and the call for resilience can further deepens this feeling. This presentation will underscore the potential role that the guidelines from improvisational theatre can have to impact our lives, our teams, and our patients, and will feature both didactic and experiential components.

5:15 -
6 p.m.

Tentative:

Cocktails & Silent Auction Opens

6 -
6:30 p.m.

OPPF Annual Meeting and Awards Presentation

6:30 -
9 p.m.

Sunday

8-8:55 a.m.

Visit Exhibits

8-8:55 a.m.

Buffet Breakfast

9-10 a.m.

Changing Views of Psychiatric Diagnosis and Classification

Awais Aftab, MD | Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland and Southwest General, Middleburg Heights

Psychiatric classifications work within certain assumptions about the nature of mental illness that are taken for granted. This presentation will provide an overview of the historical development of Kraepelinian and neo-Kraepelinian psychiatric classifications and will examine how questions of classification, especially the tension between description and hypothetical-conjectural methods, have intersected with questions about the nature of psychiatric disorders in modern history. Ongoing controversies, including the rise of dimensional approaches, currently exemplified by HiTOP and by ICD-11's adoption of a dimensional model of personality disorders, will also be examined, and the talk will conclude with preliminary remarks on future directions.

10-10:30 a.m.

10:30 -
11:30 a.m.

Removing the Mask: 2.0 - How a Surgeon's Mental Health Story Can be a Catalyst for Improving Mental Health Care

Carrie Cunningham, MD, MPH | Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, Section Head of Massachusetts General Hospital Endocrine Surgery Unit, Boston, Massachusetts

In this session, Dr. Cunningham will discuss the current mental health crisis among health care professionals. Through her own lived experience, she will discuss the current state, barriers to care, and a multifaceted approach to enacting change in mental health awareness, reducing stigma and increasing resources for those who are struggling in our community.

11:30 a.m. -
12:45 p.m.

Psychodynamic Psychopharmacology: Person-Centered Approaches to Pharmacologic Treatment Resistance

David Mintz, MD | Director of Psychiatric Education, Associate Director of Training, and Team Leader, Austen Riggs Center, Stockbridge, MA

Though psychiatry has benefited from an increasingly evidence-based perspective and a proliferation of safer and more tolerable treatments, outcomes are not substantially better than they were a quarter of a century ago. Treatment resistance remains a serious problem across psychiatric diagnoses. One likely reason is that that the systems within which psychiatrists are working often create pressures to adopt a reductionist framework, neglecting the fundamental role of psychosocial factors in shaping pharmacotherapy outcomes.

Psychodynamic Psychopharmacology is a psychodynamically-informed, patient-centered approach to psychiatric patients that explicitly acknowledges and addresses the central role of meaning and interpersonal factors in pharmacologic treatment. While traditional objective-descriptive psychopharmacology provides guidance about what to prescribe, the techniques of Psychodynamic Psychopharmacology inform prescribers about how to prescribe to maximize outcomes, not only in terms of addressing symptoms, but also in ways that support the patient’s development, increase in the patient’s personal authority, and foster general wellbeing.

This presentation will touch on the evidence base connecting meaning, medications, and outcomes, and will review psychodynamic concepts relevant to the practice of psychopharmacology. We will explore how psychodynamic issues may interfere with optimal outcomes, particularly in patients with a history of early adverse experiences.  Then we will consider techniques for identifying and addressing treatment-interfering dynamics.