Eleanor & Thomas P. Hackett Memorial Award Lecture: A Special Relationship

C-L psychiatry is all about relationships: relationships with psychiatry colleagues, with other physicians, ‎and with patients and their families. Thinking more widely about our relationships we might ask, who ‎inspired us to become C-L psychiatrists? And who has helped to shape our subsequent careers?‎

In this lecture, I will talk about people, many of whom I met through ACLP, who have inspired and ‎sustained me in my career as a clinician and as a researcher. The positive effect of these people on my ‎life, and on my efforts to better integrate psychiatry into medicine, makes my connection with each of ‎them a special relationship.‎

Reflecting on what has made a relationship special to us in our own lives, and in the progress of our ‎careers, could help us to do more, and be more, for our colleagues, for other physicians, and most ‎importantly for our patients and their loved ones.‎

‎Footnote: the term ‘a special relationship’ has been used in the UK since the 1940s to refer to our ‎positive and enduring relationship with the US.‎