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SOBP Vision Statement
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The vision of the Society of Biological Psychiatry is to integrate, advance, and promulgate science relevant to psychiatric disorders, in order to reduce or prevent the suffering of people with these conditions.
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Message from the Editor
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Hello everyone,
Thanks to everyone who collaborated to create a great annual meeting in Atlanta. The city turned out to be a great choice for our conference and the Hyatt rolled out the red carpet and delivered a wonderful venue. Our attendance was outstanding with 1573 people registered, which represented a 10% increase from the prior year. Our travel awardees grew to 75 very talented people, contributing to our growing mission in mentoring the next generation of scientists. We tried a bit different approach to plenaries and my review of our survey results is that some of these were a big hit, but others not so much. We will use this information to build toward next year's conference with a goal for continued improvement in plenaries. The 60 symposia were well attended and rated highly, as were the 850 posters in the evening sessions. As is true every year, the quality of the science was excellent and I want to specifically thank Michael Ostacher for his outstanding leadership in organizing the scientific program and to Maggie Peterson and Mimi Macke as well as SOBP Council for managing all of the logistics and planning. In total, we had another great conference.
At our business meeting we learned that through the excellent leadership of our council and staff, SOBP is financially strong and poised to continue to develop and expand programs, with a particular eye toward mentoring. Our journal Biological Psychiatry continues to gain strength, now with an Impact Factor >11; continued kudos to John Krystal (editor) and his staff and editorial board! We also launched our new journal Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging (Cam Carter, editor) which is off to a very solid start; I hope some of you will consider sending us your best work for this exciting journal. We continue to grow our mentorship programs and initiated a partnership with APA and ACNP for a Sunday research colloquium that added more talented young investigators to all of our organizations' meetings. SOBP remains a strong, successful organization for behavioral neuroscientists; I hope any of you reading this who are not members will consider joining.
We are focusing on our meeting in San Diego May 18-20, 2017. Paul Holtzheimer is serving as this year's Program Director and will work closely with Kerry Ressler, our new president, and the program committee to create next year's conference. They are already actively planning and I guarantee that they will deliver a great scientific program. Please plan to attend.
Finally, I have been honored and thoroughly enjoyed serving as your president during the past year. Thank you all (or should I say y'all since I've moved to Texas?) so much for electing me into that role and giving me such a great opportunity. I look forward to seeing you next year in San Diego.
Best Wishes
Steve Strakowski, MD
Founding Chair, Department of Psychiatry
Professor of Psychiatry & Psychology
Dell Medical School, University of Texas
Austin TX
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in these editorials are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, its officers, or members.
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2017 Meeting Announcement - Save the Date
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Society of Biological Psychiatry
72nd Annual Scientific Meeting
May 18-20, 2017
Hilton San Diego Bayfront
San Diego, California
"Networks and Complexity in Biology, Brain and Behavior"
Important Dates (tentative)
August 1, 2016 - Travel Award Applications Open
September 1, 2016 - Call for Symposia and Oral/Poster Abstracts Open October 21, 2016 - Symposia Proposals Due
December 16, 2016 - Oral and Poster Abstracts Due
Visit www.sobp.org for updated information as it becomes available. |
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Journal News
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Biological Psychiatry. Thomson Reuters released the latest Journal Citation Reports on June 14. Biological Psychiatry is happy to announce that its impact factor has increased again this year, to 11.212. It currently ranks 5th among 140 Psychiatry titles and 11th among 256 Neurosciences titles.
Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. Remember to keep an eye out for new issues of this new journal. Issue 5 published online on July 1.
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SOBP Mentorship Committee
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This is the third year that the mentorship committee has been established, to foster interest and enthusiasm for studying and conducting research in biological psychiatry in future generations.
We have historically provided mentorship to travel awardees in a number of groups, including residents, graduate students, and junior faculty. In the past two years, with the assistance and support of the SOBP Council and Education Committee, we have expanded our mentee groups, and new this year, we have just added the American Psychiatry Association (APA) Colloquium travel awardees to our group of mentees. We have nearly maximized utilization of our society mentor volunteers: 184 society respondents, 140 mentor volunteers, 122 eligible to mentor, and 113 matched to mentees this year in Atlanta.
We continue to have a strong response with volunteers from the society willing to be mentors, matching well over 100 mentors with mentees who are travel awardees. The process has been successful and seamless, with the tremendous support of Maggie and Mimi. The range of mentoring has expanded as well, to include everything from intensive one-to-one mentoring for travel awardees, to providing meeting ambassadors to help them navigate the SOBP annual meeting. At future annual meetings, the Mentorship Committee seeks to firmly establish a Society tradition of mentoring the next generation of potential SOBP members, by mentoring the SOBP Travel Award Winners, Chair's Choice Winners, and the new APA Research Colloquium Winners. Given the success and enthusiasm for these programs, an exciting development has been the emerging recognition by Society members of the unmet need for continuing mentorship of mid-level and even senior members of the Society, mentoring each other as they face the many challenges of academic careers.
If you are interested in becoming a SOBP Mentor, please email [email protected].
Carolyn Drazinic, MD, PhD
Mentorship Committee Chair
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SOBP Women's Leadership Steering Group
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Psychiatry is one of the most popular career choices for women. In many countries, women outnumber men in training and academic positions. Despite this, women fare worse than similarly qualified men in multiple metrics, including salary levels, grant funding, academic publications and promotions, leading to under representation of women in leadership positions within clinical and academic departments and professional organizations. For example, according to the 2014 report of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 55% of psychiatry residents are women but only 13% were department chairs.
The context and the dynamics leading to the phenomenon of the "leaky pipeline" to female leadership in psychiatry, and indeed in academia in general, are complex. Much is already known about key factors associated with attrition rates amongst women. What is clear is the need to provide a platform for change that recognizes the problems faced by women, raises awareness of implicit gender biases, and offers women opportunities and tools for advancement and leadership. The Society of Biological Psychiatry (SOBP) has a long and established tradition in promoting excellence in scientific research and education within psychiatry. This tradition can only be enriched and enhanced by the equal participation of women at all levels of the society.
To this effect, we formed the SOBP Women's Leadership Group (WLG). The committee, chaired by Dr Mary Phillips, was initiated at the 70thannual meeting of the Society, with the participation of the majority of senior (i.e., full professor) female members of SOBP. This initial focus of the WLG on senior female members of SOBP was driven by the need not only for a peer group for senior females in biological psychiatry, but also by the realization that many senior females in our field lack leadership skills training, and that this may be one of the barriers to taking on leadership roles that women in our field experience. By providing such training and peer group support to senior women in our field, the WLG could subsequently support and nurture junior female colleagues. The mission of the WLG was thus developed to reflect this focus: "To meet the identified needs of senior and mid-career female scientists who are members of the Society, to enable them to be even more effective leaders and role models in the field of biological psychiatry."
During the first 12 months of the WLG, members of the WLG have had bi-monthly conference calls, during which the following were identified as key first steps toward the goal of our mission statement. These were confirmed at the second annual meeting of the WLG at the annual meeting of SOBP in Atlanta in 2016.
- Survey. We developed and sent out a survey to all female attendees (members and non-members of the Society) to identify the needs of women in science, and possible facilities that could be provided by the Society to meet these needs. 418 women across the range of faculty levels responded to the survey. Key themes that were evident in the responses were: the need for training on collaborative skills, leadership style, and mentorship; strategies to cope with gender bias; and requests for expansion of activities at the annual meeting for women in biological psychiatry at all faculty levels.
- Review of the collated statistics on female roles as journal editorial board members, committee members, and plenary and symposium speakers at the SOBP annual meeting. While SOBP has made impressive progress in increasing the representation of women at all levels of the society, there remains a disparity, with more male than female representation generally across the board. Thus, the WLG is making recommendations to SOBP Council to work with committees and the journal editorial boards to increase female representation at all of the above levels of the Society.
- Development of a senior female scientist leadership skills training forum. As a group, we concluded that a priority of the WLG was to provide a forum to provide leadership training skills to senior women in our field. It was agreed that the forum would take the form of an evening workshop at the annual SOBP meeting, and invitees would be the members of the WLG in the first instance. The plan will be to quickly expand this to include other senior female members of the Society.
- Expansion of WLG activities. At the second annual meeting of the WLG at the SOBP annual meeting in Atlanta, it was decided that expansion of WLG activities will be necessary to meet the goal of our mission statement. Thus, moving forward, the WLG will work on recommendations to expand the WLG program at the annual SOBP meeting to include activities that will be open to all female annual SOBP meeting attendees (junior and senior, members and non-members).
- Next steps. We would like to hear from all female SOBP members, and have your most up to date contact information and details of faculty appointment level for our database. This will help us reach out and include others in the above activities. The Society will be sending an email later this month asking all members to update their member record with their complete contact/demographic information.
Mary L. Phillips, MD - Chair and Sophia Frangou, MD, PhD
Present WLG Steering Committee:
Katherine Aitchison, Huda Akil, Victoria Arango, Carrie Bearden, Karen Berman, Hilary Blumberg, Linda Carpenter, Barbara Cornblatt, Melissa DelBello, Naomi Feinberg, Judy Ford, Sophia Frangou, Ellen Frank, Raquel Gur, Amanda Law, Ellen Leibenluft, Helen S Mayberg, Maria Oquendo, Mary L. Phillips (Chair), Uma Rao, Yvette Sheline, Helen B. Simpson, Trisha Suppes, Sophia Vinogradov, Myrna Weissman, Leanne Williams, Kristina Deligiannidis (ex officio, Education Committee Chair), Carolyn Drazinic (ex officio, Mentorship Committee Chair)
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Membership Committee
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On behalf of the membership committee, I would like to share with all of you several positive trends of the membership of our society. Firstly, we have welcomed 162 new members in 2015 and the first half of 2016. Among these new members, 59% are female, which is a welcome trend (given that in general women still make up only 27% of our membership).
Also, the retention rate (renewal of memberships) has increased to 89% in 2015 (from an average of 82% in 2013-2014). The renewal rate is highest among regular members (92%) and lowest among student members (47%). While it is understandable that some of the student members eventually develop interests for different scientific venues, we are very pleased that these students have decided to join our society at this early stage in their careers and that some of them will develop a longer-lasting affiliation with our group.
We have also improved our ability to attract and retain non-physician members: the percentage of PhD members has increased to 29% in 2015 (from 26% in 2013). In 2015, 48% of our members were MDs, 29% were PhDs, 17% were MD/PhDs, and 2% had a MA/MS/BA/BS degree.
We in the membership committee believe these are positive and welcome trends for the future of our society. However, we should continue to make efforts to improve our ability to attract women and non-physician members to our society. We are envisioning additional outreach efforts to promote the value of membership in our society and we would welcome any suggestions for improving our performance in this regard. Additionally, we are making efforts to streamline the application process for membership and we are encouraging all the non-members attendees of our yearly meeting to apply for membership.
We are pleased that our society continues to grow and to attract new generations of psychiatrists and neuroscience researchers, and we thank our current members for continuing to be active supporters and promoters of our society.
Dan V. Iosifescu, MD, MSc
Membership Committee Chair
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New Members
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Welcome the following new members to the Society, effective July 1, 2016.
| First | MI | Last | Affiliation | Member Type | Sponsor | | Alexandra | L. | Aaronson | Northwestern University | Student Member | John Csernansky | | Margarita | | Abi Zeid Daou | Vanderbilt | Student Member | Warren Taylor | | Naser | | Ahmadi | UCLA | Student Member | Charles Nemeroff | | Gustavo | A. | Angarita | Yale University | Member | Robert Malison | | Anita | E. | Autry | Harvard University | Student Member | Eero Castren | | Adriana | | Feder | Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai | Member | James Murrough | | Cassandra | D | Gipson | Arizona State University | Associate Member | Eric Nestler | | Daniel | W | Grupe | University of Wisconsin-Madison | Student Member | Ryan Herringa | | Salomon | | Israel | Hebrew University | Student Member | Simone Sharnay-Tsoory | | Felipe | A. | Jain | University of California, San Francisco | Member | Owen Wolkowitz | | Yan | | Jouroukhin | Johns Hopkins University | Student Member | Mikhail Pletnikov | | Iris | | Lange | Harvard University | Student Member | Mohammed Milad | | Kevin | J | Manning | U Conn | Member | K. Ranga Krishnan | | Timothy | | Mariano | Brigham & Women's Hospital/Harvard | Member | Noah Philip | | David | | Mathai | Baylor University | Student Member | Sanjay Mathew | | Timothy | I | Michaels | University of Connecticut | Student Member | Vladan Novokovic | | Yoan | | Mihov | Psychiatric University Clinic Bern | Student Member | Gregor Hasler | | Keiho | | Owada | University of Tokyo | Student Member | Hideori Yamasue | | Iain | | Perkes | New South Wales Institute of Psychiatry | Member | Ian Hickie | | Tina | | Roostaei | Centre for Addiction and Mental Health | Student Member | Aristotle Voineskos | | Gregory | | Sahlem | Medical University of South Carolina | Member | E. Baron Short | | Alexander | C.W. | Smith | Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai | Student Member | Paul Kenny | | Tyler | | Stratton | Fort Belvoir Community Hospital | Associate Member | Chideha Ohohua | | Shariful | | Syed | Jackson Memorial/Univ of Miami | Student Member | Jeremy Coplan | | Laura | | Tully | UC Davis | Member | Cameron Carter | | Xin | | Wang | University of Toledo | Member | James Swain | | Allison | | Waters | Emory University | Student Member | Helen Mayberg | | Benjamin | | Young | University of Hawaii | Associate Member | Elliott Richelson |
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| Position Opening - Editor-in-Chief - Depression and Anxiety | |
The Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) seeks applicants for the position of Editor-in-Chief for the journal,
Depression and Anxiety. In consultation with the publisher Wiley, the Editor-in-Chief and ADAA are responsible for establishing the editorial policy and defining the aims and scope of the journal. ADAA is an equal opportunity organization that strongly encourages women, minorities, people with disabilities, and veterans to apply. With an impact factor of 5.004, this journal ranks 19 out of 140 psychiatry journals and 10 out of 76 psychology journals. The impact factor and rank continue to trend upward each year. A priority is placed on papers focusing on pathophysiology and treatment of anxiety and mood disorders, as well as those providing cutting-edge reviews of key areas and issues; the goal of this journal is to enhance the clinical evaluation and care of individuals struggling with the effects of these disorders.
Candidates must meet the following criteria:
- outstanding professional status and international recognition in the field of anxiety mood, obsessive-compulsive, and trauma-related disorders
- a reputation for personal and professional integrity
- superb writing, editorial, and journalistic skills
- familiarity with the editorial process
- evidence of organizational leadership
- contributions to ADAA, including leadership positions, or commitment to join and contribute to the ADAA mission
To apply, email the following to Mary Gies by July 15, 2016:
- full curriculum vitae (no NIH-style biosketches)
- names and contact information of three professional references
- one- to three-page statement of your vision for the journal
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Other Meetings of Interest
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October 30 - November 4, 2016
Jerusalem, Israel
November 25-28, 2016
Lima, Peru December 4-8, 2016
Hollywood, Florida
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Get Involved - Join a Committee
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Did you know that over 20 % of our members are actively engaged on Society committees? Want to be engaged and involved with one of our committees? Looking for a leadership opportunity? Then signup to join one of the Society's many award committees or a task force. Click here to tell us which groups you would be interested in joining. |
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SOBP Career Center
|  SOBP's Career Center connects our members with employment opportunities and employers with the best professionals within our membership. Employment opportunities range from post-doc positions, faculty positions, neuroscience jobs in industry and alternative careers. Visit SOBP's Career Center today to explore employment opportunities. Post an anonymous resume for employers or recruiters to view. Links to other resources are available for your convenience. |
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Add SOBP to your Contacts
|  Be sure to add the following email address to your address book. To communicate quickly and efficiently with our members, all correspondence (membership renewals, newsletter, meeting announcements, etc) from the Society is sent via email. Depending upon the type of correspondence, you may receive emails from the following addresses:
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Contact Us
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Society of Biological Psychiatry Business Office
4500 San Pablo Rd - Birdsall 310
Jacksonville, FL 32224
904-953-2842 Office
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Biological Psychiatry and Biological Psychiatry:CNNI Editorial Office
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
6363 Forest Park Rd., Suite 651
Dallas, TX 75235-5435
214-648-0880 Office
214-648-0881 Fax
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Society of Biological Psychiatry Newsletter Editorial Staff
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Stephen M. Strakowski, MD, Editor
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Editorial Board
Helen Mayberg, MD
William B. Lawson, MD, PhD, DLFAPA
Alan H. Young, MD, PhD
Caleb M. Adler, MD
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