The Annual Meeting of APPA is designed to provide basic and clinical researchers with a high quality educational overview of specific timely topics regarding psychopathology and substance use/abuse. The meeting is open to all interested professionals with expertise in psychopathology. The program features invited talks by renowned experts who speak on topics related to a special theme that is determined by the upcoming APPA President, in consultation with the APPA Council. In addition, the meeting has a poster session that allows those in attendance to present brief reports of their own current work. The invited speakers at the Annual Meeting contribute chapters to a special edited volume that creates a permanent record of the event. In this application we request support for the 2008, 2009 and 2010 annual meetings of the American Psychopathological Association. These conferences have in depth focuses on causal processes and inferences in psychopathology research (2008), issues regarding the formation of guides for diagnosis and classification (2009) and public health issues in psychiatry (2010).
The aims of the application are 1. To facilitate the planning, organization and implementation of open interdisciplinary meetings related to mental health and substance use that promote interaction among research and clinical professionals around cutting edge issues in the field and that provides a forum for continuing education of those professionals. 2. To obtain a written record of the questions, responses and other discussion that follow presentations by renowned basic and clinical scientists and to make the content of this discussion available to the general scientific and clinical community as a supplement to the published volume of presentations. 3. To enable a broader spectrum of junior scientists and students to attend the annual meeting by providing support for travel and per diem costs to 15 or more fellows. The APPA conference promotes public health by encouraging basic scientists to discuss new approaches, methods and findings with prevention and clinical researchers. Dissemination of technical information promotes translation to public health programs.
