By Bruce Hershfield, MD
[Winter 2006; Vol. 33, No. 1; Pg 3-5]
On
April 27, 2006, eighty-five members and guests attended the MPS Annual Meeting
at the Hunt Valley Golf Club in Phoenix. After a cocktail reception during
which we listened to the Silverbacks (including MPS member Donn Teubner-Rhodes
on the flute), we were welcomed by MPS President Joseph Schwartz. Then, on
behalf of the Maryland Foundation for Psychiatry, Dr. Jonas Rappeport gave its
Outstanding Merit Award to Mr. Edgar K. Wiggins. Among his other achievements,
Mr. Wiggins has been involved in about 40 shows concerning mental health issues
that have aired on MPTV and Baltimore County cable. He has been particularly
effective in getting people to “tell their stories” on-camera, which has
promoted awareness of psychiatric issues and has advanced our efforts to
destigmatize psychiatric disorders.
After
Dr. Schwartz thanked the members of the MPS Council and gave certificates to the
committee chairpersons, he turned the Presidency over to William Prescott, MD,
commenting, “You have got a great President.” Dr. Prescott praised his
predecessors and Dr. Sharfstein, the APA President, and pledged to “confront
challenges to physician ownership in the mental health field.” He made
it clear that he wants the MPS to cooperate with NAMI, the Suburban Maryland
Psychiatric Society, and the APA, and he reached out to those psychiatrists who
are not yet MPS members, stating that he wants them to join us.
Dr.
Prescott then awarded the MPS 2006 Lifetime of Service Award to Leon A. Levin,
MD, praising his commitment to community psychiatry. Dr. Levin, who
initiated “People Encouraging People” and who was Medical Director of the
Walter P. Carter Center, has worked extensively on issues of confidentiality and
on behalf of the community mental health centers and to destigmatize the
community’s attitudes concerning psychiatric patients.
Dr.
Levin, who served as MPS President in 1982-83, began by saying that
participating on MPS committees has been “no burden, but a privilege” and
that “sharing my efforts with colleagues has been a pleasure.”
Commenting that he came to Maryland over 40 years ago ”as a complete
stranger”, he told us how important “making me a member of the family” was
for him. He concluded by thanking his wife for “making it possible to go
to all those meetings guilt-free.”
It
was then time for Solomon H. Snyder, MD, who developed and who has directed the
Johns Hopkins Department of Neuroscience, to speak about “Psychiatry in the
21st Century”. Dr. Snyder, the author of more than 1000 journal articles
and several books, has won the National Medal of Science and the Lasker Award.
Pointing out that only three neurotransmitters were known when he was in medical
school and that about 100 are known now, he told us that drug development had
not changed much in-between the introduction of Dilantin in 1938 and the
“revolution” that started in 1973, when Dr. Jerome Jaffe became “Drug
Czar” and created drug abuse research centers.
“Where
are we going now?” he asked, as we use a molecular biology approach and search
for the genes that are responsible for psychiatric disorders. Research
done by Dr. Stanley Fields in 1990 led us to understand how proteins bind to
each other, Dr. Snyder explained. He went on to describe the effects of
nitric oxide on blood vessels, on the brain, and on the immune system,
emphasizing the importance of the discovery that nitric oxide stimulates COX-2
to make more prostaglandins. “We are getting closer to identifying genes for
schizophrenia,” he said, commenting that DISC-1 disruption “may cause a lot
of schizophrenia” and that it binds to cytoskeletal proteins. It also binds to
PDE-4 and, when it does, it inactivates it.
“Drugs
that regulate the binding of these two would make all sorts of things
possible,” he told us. Genes and protein-protein binding will make it
possible for us to make more and more powerful psychiatric agents,” he
concluded.
With grateful appreciation to Dr. Levin for what he has done, an award honoring Mr. Wiggins for his efforts to explain to the community what we are doing, the transition of the Presidency from Dr. Schwartz to Dr. Prescott, and Dr. Snyder’s explanation of how understanding the nervous system can lead to an exciting future, we had a chance to see where we have come from, what we are trying to do, and where we can go from here.