In Newcastle upon Tyne last April, I reached
agreement with the IPA Board on an extension
of my IPA Bulletin editorship, which will
take us through to the March, 2002 issue.
By that stage I will have been Editor for five
years and three months, and 19 issues will
have appeared under my direction. In
addition, my secretary, Yvonne Liddicoat,
who has assisted me with the IPA Bulletin
since I took over as Editor in late 1996,
plans to retire in the first quarter of 2002. Rather
than inflict the large amount of work involved in
preparing the newsletter on another University of
Melbourne secretary and, furthermore, run the risk
of really wearing out my welcome with the membership,
I think it will then be time to hand over the
reins to someone else as IPA enters its third decade.
The next two issues will give some taste of a possible
alternative future, as I will be taking a short sabbatical
in order to focus on preparations for the forthcoming
joint meeting of IPA and the Section of
Psychiatry of Old Age of the Royal Australian and
New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, which will take
place in the seaside resort town of Lorne, two hours
drive southwest of Melbourne, 4-7 February, 2001.
Our new Deputy Editor, Professor John O'Brien,
familiar to some of you after the excellent work he
did with Professor Ian McKeith in organizing IPA's
Newcastle meeting last April, will take responsibility
for the production of the December, 2000
and March, 2001 issues. He will be approaching
some of you for copy over the next few months and
I urge you to give him your full cooperation. Any
material that comes to me between now and the
Lorne meeting will be forwarded to him for editing.
I also urge members to send unsolicited contributions,
especially items of local news, to him via e-mail at
j.t.o'brien@ncl.ac.uk.
In producing these issues of the IPA Bulletin,
Professor O'Brien will be ably assisted by Dottie
Zoller. Many of you have commented to me on the
advances made in layout, organization, and struc-ture
of the Bulletin over the last three and a half
years and it is no coincidence that these occurred
while Dottie Zoller was the IPA staff member directly
responsible for production of the IPA Bulletin.
Although I am sad to report that Dottie left IPA's
full-time employ at the end of May, I am delighted
to advise you that our Executive Director, Fern
Finkel, has negotiated a contractual arrangement
whereby Dottie will continue to work on the IPA
Bulletin on a consultancy basis while pursuing other
personal and professional goals.
I would like to call your attention to one other
unprecedented development for IPA. The
Faculty of Psychiatry of Old Age of the Royal
College of Psychiatrists (FPOA RCPsych) (UK)
produces an excellent newsletter, Old Age
Psychiatrist, edited by Dr. Carmelo Aquilina,
whose advice, assistance, and support have
been a great help to me as Editor of the IPA
Bulletin. It has been the practice of the FPOA
RCPsych to publish an annual special issue of
Old Age Psychiatrist featuring highlights of their yearly
scientific and business meeting. As in 2000 that
meeting was run as a joint affair with IPA in
Newcastle upon Tyne from 4-7 April, Dr. Aquilina
suggested that we should attempt to obtain sponsorship
to produce a joint special issue of Old Age
Psychiatrist and the IPA Bulletin, which would be
circulated to the entire membership of both organi-zations.
If you have not yet received it, this special
joint issue, sponsored by Pfizer UK and Eisai UK
Ltd. should arrive in your in-tray within the next
few weeks.
Such a joint venture represents something of a
"first" for IPA, and it is appropriate that our national
collaborator on this special issue should be the
United Kingdom, which led the world in the development
of the specialty of geriatric medicine and
also was at the forefront of service development for
older people with psychiatric disorders. Other
national organizations produce excellent newsletters
and some of their editors have been kind enough to
send me copies. In the future, I hope it may be
possible for us to produce further joint issues with
other national old age psychiatry and psychogeriatric
organizations, particularly those that have taken the
formal step of affiliation to IPA.
This issue contains two important announcements.
First, it is once again time to encourage young
researchers in our field to consider submitting a
paper for the 2001 IPA Research Awards, which will
be presented at IPA's Tenth Congress, "Bridging the
Gap Between Brain and Mind," in Nice, France, 9-14
September 2001. As readers will have seen from our
"Where are they now?" series, these awards can have
a huge, beneficial impact on a young researcher's
career. The second important announcement is the
results of the recent elections to IPA's Board of
Directors (see page 5). Congratulations to all
successful candidates and a special welcome to
those who are new to the IPA Board. Profiles of
these Board members will appear in future issues of
IPA Bulletin.
I and the rest of the editorial staff hope that you
interest, my own particular favorite in this issue is the article from
Oscar Arbulú Villasis about the history of psychogeriatrics in Peru.
My 84-year-old aunt tells me that when I was a little boy, I somewhat
obnoxiously asked, "Auntie Marjorie, don't you know anything
about the Incas of Peru?" After reading the Villasis article, I belated-ly
realize that I didn't know much about them then, either! Thanks
to Oscar Arbulú Villasis, I am pleased to say that I do now, and
soon, you will too!
I very much regret that it won't be possible for me to attend IPA's
forthcoming Regional Meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, but I do hope
a lot of you will get to that fascinating country. I know Porto Alegre
is a long way geographically, climatically, and culturally from
Newcastle upon Tyne, but one thing the two places have in common
is the competence and commitment of the meeting organizers.
I am sure it will be a great success. Following that meeting, I and
my colleagues on the Organizing Committee will have the challenge
of living up to your expectations in Lorne, where I hope to see
several old friends and make many new ones next February. After
that, I shall look forward to being in touch with you all again in the
June, 2001, issue of the IPA Bulletin.
David Ames, Editor of the IPA Bulletin, can be contacted at the
Department of Psychiatry, 7th Floor, Charles Connibere Building,
Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville, Vic 3050, Australia (tel: +61 3 9342 2515, fax: +61 3 9387 9201,
e-mail: y.liddicoat@medicine.unimelb.edu.au).
David Ames
Reprinted from IPA Bulletin, Volume 17, Number
3
Copyright 2008 International Psychogeriatric Association
