The 2024 APA Annual Meeting Ethics Track features a range of topics at the forefront of psychiatric practice. Past APA presidents and current leaders in psychiatric ethics present an educational panel on the legal and ethical controversies surrounding medical aid in dying (MAID), calling on colleagues from Canada and geriatric psychiatry to explore the psychosocial and cultural factors that influence decision-making processes for both patients and healthcare clinicians.

The APA Ethics Committee’s annual panel “Psychiatric Dilemmas in Psychiatric Practice” will respond to audience questions on dilemmas that arise in day-to-day practice and review the role and function of the committee itself. A panel on the responsible and equitable use of psychedelic therapies will review current research and the standards necessary for its advancement.

In keeping with the annual meeting’s focus on addictions, senior addictions specialists will describe comprehensive, integrated, public health approaches in working with substance use disorders, focusing on harm reduction and its ethical challenges. The panel “Incorporating harm-reduction strategies into the SBIRT model” (Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment) emphasizes patient-driven approaches to risk-reduction that are less stigmatizing and improve quality of life.

Likewise, a panel on the current landscape of mandatory substance use treatment will focus on decision-making capacity and the ethics of treatment refusals, especially those that can be respected. Ethics and harm reduction play a key role here as well.

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