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IPA Bulletin

Editor's Note: What do you want from IPA Bulletin?

David Ames

What does the IPA membership want from IPA Bulletin? I was delighted to be asked to take over from Co Bleeker as editor, because I have the highest respect for the quality and interest of the material he has published and because I believe that IPA is the obvious vehicle for the worldwide advancement of psycho-geriatrics. In this editorial I will spell out some ideas for the further development of this publication. But I am only one of many members of IPA, and my tastes, enthusiasms, and interests are (notoriously!) idiosyncratic. Therefore, I am issuing an open and indefinite invitation to the membership to let me know what is good or bad, interesting or boring, over- or under-represented in this and future issues. It is also an invitation to contribute, since IPA Bulletin relies absolutely upon the membership for its content. If you have an interesting idea, a new research finding, a bee in your bonnet, or a task in which other members of IPA can assist, then let us all know about it through these pages.

First and foremost, the Bulletin must convey news and information about IPA. New initiatives, reports of our meetings and workshops, changes in office bearers, and announcements of future activities feature in the pages of this issue and will continue to be prominent in future issues. I also would like the membership at large to be informed about their representatives at the board level. This issue contains a number of self-written profiles of members of IPA's Board of Directors. Over the next two issues I hope to publish profiles of all current board members not previously profiled, and thereafter to publish information about all new board members and office bearers within 6 months of their appointment. Publication of a photograph - however unflattering - will be compulsory. This organisation is not a faceless bureaucracy!

Members of IPA are involved in psychogeriatric clinical work, teaching, and research. Many of the things that you do every day would be of interest to other members. Styles of work and practice vary so widely around the globe that exposure to others' methods of working is highly likely to stimulate worthwhile innovation and insights that may benefit patients elsewhere. In this issue, for example, you will find articles on a community memory clinic in Wales and the practice of psychogeriatrics in Chile. I am especially keen to publish information about innovative, remote, challenging, and pioneering service initiatives.

IPA is an international organisation, and the Bulletin's articles should reflect that fact. (IPA's international nature was brought home to me in Reykjav’k last October when I, born in England, found myself "invited" with two Australian colleagues, who were born in China and New Zealand, to give an impromptu performance of "Waltzing Matilda" to a polyglot audience well north of the Arctic Circle.) I will bend over backwards to avoid an English- speaking hegemony in these pages, but to attain that goal I need the assistance of those of you who practice outside the Anglophonic world. Do not be intimidated by any perceived limitations in your own written English. The editorial staff are happy to tidy up grammar, punctuation, and syntax for you.

Psychogeriatrics is a multidisciplinary activity. Our patients often require expertise that is not the province of any one discipline. IPA is not and should not be an organization run exclusively by or for medical practitioners. I am keen to facilitate information and exchange of views in a variety of disciplinary areas. Nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, psychologists, administrators, health planners, demographers, and other allied professionals are invited to send me material for publication and ideas about how we can advance the interests of these areas of expertise in the context of this organization. Should we have a discipline- specific news page?

This publication does not publish peer-reviewed articles describing original research; that is the job of International Psychogeriatrics. But IPA Bulletin can serve as a conduit for the dissemination of research news and concepts. This issue has an article about the Camberwell Dementia Case Register, a valuable resource that might usefully be replicated in other places. If you and your colleagues are running an interesting research programme which is producing results of importance, write me about it. The Bulletin can bring your work to wider attention.

My aim is to increase the frequency of publication to four issues yearly. It would then be possible to incorporate a news page similar to those found in Science, New Scientist, or The Lancet, where new developments including research news could be conveyed.

Although IPA runs excellent congresses and meetings, there are several other organizations that offer conferences whose content may also be of interest to IPA members yet there is no way we can all attend every one of them. This issue contains a summary of the research presented at the Osaka International Conference on AlzheimerÕs Disease and Related Disorders. I hope that members will volunteer to summarise for future issues other meetings with a major psychogeriatric focus.

Book reviews are the province of International Psychogeriatrics and will not be included here. However, the practice of publishing brief announcements of new books and videos seems to be valuable and will continue from time to time.

In addition to their professional activities, members of IPA have hobbies, enthusiasms, and outside interests. The Chicago office will keep me on a tight leash to prevent me from turning IPA Bulletin into Opera magazine, but there might be some interest in a regular page on which members could convey to others what it is about their own recreational passions that turns them on. If you have an enthusiasm, let me know, and we can discuss the possibility of a short article. What do you think of this concept?

Over the next few months, I will be approaching individuals who could assist me in the editorial task by collating material from regions, in the research arena, and on discipline-specific issues. Once appointed, their names and contact details will be published in the Bulletin. My editorial in-tray is and will remain open. Write to me, fax me, or (once I am connected via the hole that has been drilled in my wall) E-mail me with ideas, comments, suggestions for articles, or best of all, written material for publication.

This article appeared in IPA Bulletin, Volume 14, Number 1