However, in order to fulfill a campaign promise to increase psychiatry's political influence, he ended up having to act on his own. We need to advocate for our patients and our profession, and we need to be very vigorous about it by working together at a grassroots level. Nevertheless, even he acknowledged that grassroots organizing requires more attention. One of the problems, and this has been a problem all through medicine, has been that the profession is unable to mobilize physicians, including psychiatrists, to raise hell with their legislators. State issues impact federal legislation.
Federal legislation impacts the states.
We can't have these two entities disconnected. In line with that goal, the APA has a public policy advocacy section on its Web site. It publishes newsletters and issue statements about federal, state and regulatory issues impacting psychiatry and health care. As part of that section, APA members can fill out a form to join the Division of Government Relations Grassroots Network. The network has a membership of 2,500 of the 40,000 APA members.