2023 Larry J. Seidman Award
Following his death in 2017 the board of the IEPA created the Larry Seidman Award to honour Dr. Lawrence J. Seidman, an eminent neuropsychologist and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. The Larry Seidman Award recognises outstanding mentoring of junior researchers or clinicians involved in mental health research.
Dr. Seidman was a leader in the area of early intervention and prevention of serious mental illness. His work was instrumental in the development of innovative clinical services for early course psychotic disorder patients, as well as for those at clinical high risk for these illnesses in Massachusetts. He was an astute clinician, and a highly sought-after teacher and mentor. Scores of scientists and clinicians around the world owe their accomplishments to his tutelage. Many of his mentees are leading scientists, professors or department heads around the world.
Eligibility Criteria
The applicant should be a current member of the IEPA as at 31st December, 2022.
We recognise that individuals may have started their training at different ages and/or had career breaks. As such, there is no fixed age range for applications.
Application Instructions
Please submit your application via email to LSA@iepa.org.au by March 20th 2023.
Your application should comprise of the following:
A front sheet with your name, date of birth, postal and email addresses, and your IEPA membership number.
A brief statement of intent explaining why you are applying for the award, your career plans and how the award would help you towards this goal, and provide a brief description of your approach to mentoring and give examples of how you implement this in your practice. Please provide objective evidence and metrics where ever possible; this may duplicate evidence provided in the curriculum vitae, below. This document should be a maximum of 800 words.
An up-to-date, abridged curriculum vitae (maximum of 3 pages; minimum font 11), this should include details of your qualifications, your current post, and a list of up to 5 key achievements (minimum=1; maximum=5) that highlights your work in early intervention e.g. evidence of your clinical expertise in the field; relevant publications on a topic related to early intervention.
A brief letter of support (maximum 350 words) from a sponsor who can attest to your work in early intervention.
Please note: your application will be rejected if it arrives after the deadline or it fails to meet the maximum document limit requirements.
Notification
All applicants will be notified by 5th May
Past Larry J. Seidman Award Recipients
2018 - Matcheri Keshevan
2023 - Anne Thorup
2023 Angelo Cocchi Award
After his death in 2015, the board of the IEPA created the Angelo Cocchi Award to honour his contribution to the field of early intervention in psychosis. The Angelo Cocchi Award is awarded to a clinician or clinical academic who has made a significant contribution to the study or implementation of fidelity to an evidence-based model of early intervention for youth and psychosis.
Angelo will be remembered for his pioneering work in partnership with Anna Meneghelli in leading the early intervention reform paradigm in Italy, and being a key member of the international leadership group which created and maintained momentum, produced scientific evidence and developed unique clinical expertise in support of this overdue reform. His sudden and untimely death prevented him from being present to co-convene the 10th International Early Psychosis Conference in Milan in October 2016.
Eligibility Criteria
The applicant should be a current member of the IEPA as at 31st December, 2022.
The awardee must have a clinical qualification and be actively engaged in clinical work with individuals with mental health issues
We recognise that individuals may have started their training at different ages and/or had career breaks. As such, there is no fixed age range for applications.
Application Instructions
Please submit your application via email to ACA@iepa.org.au by March 20th 2023
Your application should comprise of the following:
A front sheet with your name, date of birth, postal and email addresses, and your IEPA membership number.
A brief statement of intent (maximum 500 words) explaining why you are applying for the award, your career plans and how the award would help you towards this goal, and in what ways you are becoming a leader in the field of early intervention in future. Please provide objective evidence and metrics where ever possible; this may duplicate evidence provided in the curriculum vitae, below.
An up-to-date, abridged curriculum vitae (maximum of 3 pages; minimum font 11), this should include details of your qualifications, your current post, and a list of up to 5 key achievements (minimum=1; maximum=5) that highlights your work in early intervention e.g. evidence of your clinical expertise in the field; relevant publications on a topic related to early intervention
A brief letter of support (maximum 350 words) from a sponsor who can attest to your work in early intervention.
Please note: your application will be rejected if it arrives after the deadline or it fails to meet the maximum document limit requirements.
Notification
All applicants will be notified by 5th May 2023
Angelo Cocchi (1939-2015)
Angelo was born in Milan on 21 March 1939. He began his career as an academic researcher, however, when he was 34 years old he was appointed to the post of senior consultant psychiatrist at the Neuropsychiatric Hospital of Varese. At the time he was one of the youngest in Italy to hold such a post. After some years in Varese, then in Parabiago and Rho, he moved back to Milan. From the beginning Angelo was attracted to, and played a leadership role in, modernizing mental health care and to progressive movements. Angelo supported the famous and dramatic Italian psychiatric reform law of 1978, which led to the closure of all the traditional mental hospitals, and the opening of a new network of community mental health centres, linked to smaller inpatient facilities located within acute general hospitals. He also supported the development of community rehabilitation centres and cooperative societies of patients, which sought to empower and integrate them into society with real jobs and normal lives. In the 1990s, he founded and was president of the Association of Day Centres in Psychiatry. He also worked in drawing up and carrying out the mental health plan of the Lombardy Region. This focused on psychiatric rehabilitation, integration of health services, and was guided by epidemiological data and a population mental health perspective. This was a natural fit with the early intervention in psychosis reform agenda. Angelo continued to work as a clinical psychiatrist in a number of mental health services and joined the boards of several national scientific societies such as the Italian Society of Psychiatric Epidemiology (SIEP) and the Italian Society of Psychosocial Rehabilitation (SIRP).
His visionary status and appetite for reform is reflected in the fact that he was the first Italian to understand that the future of mental health care would require a completely new commitment to early intervention, which would in turn mean that young people would need to become a primary focus for mental health services. With the collaboration of Anna Meneghelli, he made contact with the emerging international field of early intervention in psychosis and, together with Anna, he has been a key leader there ever since. Together and with the support of other colleagues, they developed in Milan Programma 2000, a renowned multimodal programme for early psychosis (including at-risk mental states as well as first episode psychosis). This was the first such comprehensive programme in Italy and the only one following the evidence-based guidelines and the emerging clinical and scientific international experiences. Programma 2000 represented a milestone for the progress and dissemination of the early intervention perspective in Italy. It has catalysed and supported the spread of similar platforms of clinical research (e.g. GET UP, led by Mirella Ruggeri and colleagues) and has produced a number of key articles, manuals and training programmes, which have greatly influenced and strengthened Italian psychiatry. In 2005 Angelo founded the Italian Association for Early Intervention in Psychosis (AIPP), now known as the . The AIPP became a special branch of the Italian Society of Psychiatry (SIP) and organizes a biennale national conference and an annual scientific day which has invited many international speakers. In recent years Angelo had been strongly committed to the vision of another radical in stepwise reorganization of mental health services. As president of AIPP he authored a document: ‘Early Intervention in Serious Mental Illness: An Unavoidable Future’, which foreshadowed an inevitable scenario in which mental health services are truly prevention oriented and youth focused.
Angelo’s sudden death resulted in a shock wave of sadness for his many friends and colleagues in Italy and around the world. The many tributes that were received reflect the reasons for this. He was a kind, charming, cultured and thoughtful person for whom so many felt great affection and trust. He possessed the warmth, serenity and wisdom seen in the great clinicians and leaders, and his generosity of spirit enabled him to collaborate effortlessly with others. These qualities are rare and precious, and help explain the profound local and international reaction to his passing. Our Italian colleagues have provided a wealth of examples of his talents not only as a clinician, researcher and visionary leader, but also as a wonderful and inspiring teacher and mentor. He will be long remembered and respected within the mental health field and especially by those who are never content with the status quo.
Past Angelo Cocchi Award Recipients
2023 - Amal Abdel-Baki
2018 - Lisa Dixon, Paolo del Vecchio, John Kane & Robert Heinssen
2016 – Donald Addington
Richard J. Wyatt Award
The Richard J. Wyatt Award is awarded every two years at the IEPA Biennial Conference to an individual who has made a remarkable contribution to the area of early intervention.
Richard Jed Wyatt (1937-2002) was one of the preeminent figures of his generation of biological psychiatrists. A clinician, neuroscientist, educator, and mentor to a generation of current leaders in schizophrenia research, Richard spent his career at the Intramural Research Program (IRP) of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). His lifelong work on the course and roots of schizophrenia led him into research on sleep and imaging, mood disorders, psychopharmacology, biochemistry, neuroplasticity, tardive dyskinesia, Alzheimer’s disease, and brain grafts for Parkinson’s Disease. This and other work produced roughly 800 scientific publications and six books, and his many and varied contributions to the field of psychiatry were often seminal ones. Although we now take a biological basis for schizophrenia for granted, Richard was one of the early pioneers who championed this view and brought research on schizophrenia into the lab. He was the prototypical translational researcher.
Richard presided over a research portfolio that was as varied as it was innovative. For instance, his interest in the neuropharmacology of sleep led to the first report that monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) suppressed REM sleep and could treat narcolepsy. He and his colleagues also developed a platelet assay for monoamine oxidase (MAO), which eventually led to one of the first replicated biologic correlates of schizophrenia; the finding of low platelet MAO activity in patients with schizophrenia was seen at the time as a turning point in schizophrenia research. His laboratory at the NIMH tested numerous biochemical theories of schizophrenia, from the dopamine hypothesis, to abnormal methylation of indoleamines, to autoimmunity. He was instrumental in the development of a variety of neurochemical assays and in their applications in basic and clinical studies. His laboratory was responsible for several archival developments in schizophrenia research, including the first systematic brain imaging studies, the first brain tissue archiving for postmortem neurochemical analyses, and the first systematic approach to experimental therapeutics. Richard also launched a landmark series of studies of brain plasticity, long before it was widely appreciated as an important topic. His group was the first to demonstrate the viability of fetal substantia nigra grafts and of autologous adrenal medulla grafts to reverse aspects of experimental Parkinsonism. In the last decade of his life, much of his work focused on the potential benefits of early intervention in psychotic illnesses, and he continued to collect and analyze these data until the final days of his life.
As a mentor, Richard encouraged creativity; he believed in learning by doing. He pushed for new ideas, challenged old ones, and gave his associates the opportunity to pursue their own interests. It is said that Richard mentored more of today’s eminent schizophrenia researchers than anyone else before or after him and seeded a good half of all American institutions with his students and even some spread abroad.
Over the course of his illustrious career he received many honors and awards for his work. He was also a tireless advocate for raising public consciousness about mental illness and lobbying for increased research funding. He volunteered generously of his time and energies to help organize NAMI, to serve on the board of NARSAD, to serve as president of the Manic-Depressive Illness Foundation, and to lobby government officials. He was an active participant in the educational and executive functions of the ACNP. Richard also co-produced (with his wife, Dr. Kay Jamison) a series of programs about manic depressive illness and creativity that aired on public television.
Richard was deeply devoted to discovering the etiology of schizophrenia and developing new and effective treatments for those who suffered from it. He was always looking for new experimental treatments to alleviate the pain of those suffering with schizophrenia. Richard’s enormous contributions transformed the landscape of schizophrenia research. Psychiatric research owes an immeasurable amount to him.
What is the Richard J. Wyatt Award?
Richard J. Wyatt passed away on June 7, 2002. At the time, he was North American Vice President of the IEPA, and had been since its inception. Since the early 1990s, he had supported and advanced the scientific development of early intervention. In 1991, Richard published what many consider to be one of the seminal papers in the field of early intervention—“Neuroleptics and the Natural Course of Schizophrenia”. His interest in, and commitment to, this field was born from his many years of clinical experience and from his own careful research. Richard was one of the earliest pioneers who believed that early intervention was indeed possible. In 1996, he attended the first international conference focusing exclusively on early psychosis. Titled “Verging on Reality” and held in Melbourne, Australia, it was the catalyst to the ultimate formation of the IEPA. Richard came home from Melbourne tremendously optimistic that the colleagues from all over the world that he had met at that meeting could work together to effect real change in the way that mental disorders were identified and treated. His role as North American Vice President of the IEPA was extremely valuable and contributed immeasurably to the growth and success of early psychosis research and reform.
After his death in 2002, the board of the IEPA wanted to acknowledge not only his contributions to the IEPA, but also to the field of schizophrenia research in general. The 2002 IEPA meeting, which took place in Copenhagen that year, was dedicated to his memory, and the board sought the best way to recognize his contributions and keep his memory alive. Because Richard’s colleagues knew how pleased he would have been to see the idea of early intervention taken out of the realm of the theoretical and placed so solidly in the realm of the practical, they created the Richard J. Wyatt Award to honor his contributions to the field of early intervention in psychosis. The award is presented by the IEPA at each conference to an individual who has made a significant contribution to the area of early psychosis. The active legacy created by the Richard J. Wyatt award is a fitting way to honor his memory and the invaluable contributions he made to the IEPA and the larger field of psychiatric research.
Past Recipients of the Richard J. Wyatt Award
2023 - Mark van der Gaag
2020 - Jean Addington
2018 - Jan Olav Johannessen
2016 - Professor Merete Nordentoft
2014 - Professor Eric Chen
2012 - Dr David Shiers
2010 - Professor Alison Yung
2008 - Dr Thomas McGlashan
2006 - Professor Max Birchwood
2004 - Professor Patrick McGorry