Staff leaders at American Psychiatric Association Foundation address mental health in the workplace, schools, and justice

With much on their plates to do prior to taking off for the May 5-9 Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), Darcy Gruttadaro, Director of APA Foundation’s Center for Workplace Mental Health and Christopher Seeley, the Foundation’s Program Director for School and Justice Initiatives met up with mental health advocate (and my husband) Bill Emmet and me for lunch near the APA’s new office at the waterfront in southwest Washington, DC. Both Gruttadaro and Seeley are familiar with ACEs science and were eager to learn more about where the trauma-informed movement is heading. They are relatively new to the APA Foundation—Gruttadaro was most recently was the director of children’s mental health for the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI) and Seeley is a newly minted MSW and has worked in refugee and juvenile justice services (and a member of ACEs Connection). 

The 2018 APA meeting—being held in New York City—is historic.  Dr. Altha Stewart of Memphis will assume the office of president—the first African American and the third woman in succession to rise to the highest office in the 174 year-old organization.  Dr. Stewart has addressed the role of childhood trauma in substance use and mental health challenges and has held up the work of Dr. Daniel Sumrok who has done pioneering work on the role of trauma in opioid addiction.  Both Dr. Stewart and Dr. Sumrok hold positions with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and were featured in the ACEsTooHigh.com article “Addiction doc says: It’s not the drugs. It’s the ACEs—adverse childhood experiences” by Jane Stevens. That article has had over a million page views.