2019 Annual Meeting

The Annual Meetings of the PCFA are held every fall.  They start with a catered breakfast at 8:30AM followed by a meeting open to all the PCFA members at 9:00AM. The meeting typically includes reports from Board members and faculty about various PCFA, residency, and medical-school activities, as well as the presentation of the Mandel Award. The Distinguished Psychiatrist Seminar Series follows the meeting.

Updates were provided by PCFA President David Sones, Josh Pretsky (who introduced the recipients of the Metzner Scholarship Fund and discussed the Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Concentration), Treasurer Wayne Sandler, Psychotherapy 483 Co-Coordinator J. Mark Thompson, Misty Richards, and VCFAAAC Chair Saul Faerstein. Semel Chair Peter Whybrow also spoke. Aryeh Goldberg was announced as the winner of the Hatos Prizes, and J. Zeb Little introduced Jonathan Salk as the 2019 Distinguished Psychiatrist Speaker.

Melvin Mandel was the first president of PCFA and has served on the PCFA Board of Directors ever since. He has been a model of active, consistent participation in the UCLA teaching program. Without his leadership, it is unlikely that any of the myriad contributions that PCFA makes to the training of psychiatric residents, child psychiatry fellows and medical students would have come to pass. He has been a mentor to many younger colleagues, including at least two who went on to become PCFA Presidents. On October 29, 2011 Dr. Mandel became the first recipient of the Melvin Mandel Award at PCFA’s Annual Meeting. That award will carry his name in perpetuity to exemplify the kind of excellence towards which he has guided the UCLA psychiatric clinical faculty and its trainees in his six decades here.