My Benefits
Lifelong Membership
Decades of psychiatric knowledge and experience reside within each of the nearly 8,000 APA members designated as Life Members, Life Fellows, and Distinguished Life Fellows. Determined by a combination of age, years of dedicated APA membership, and contributions to the psychiatric profession, each year the APA honors a new cadre of Life designations at the Convocation of Distinguished Fellows ceremony during the APA Annual Meeting. To learn more about achieving Life Member status, please review the Membership FAQs.
Shaping Psychiatry – Staying Connected
Life members continue to give back to the profession late into their careers and long after their practice ends in the many ways.
Are you a Life status member over 60? You may be eligible to pay a one-time, tax deductible, lump sum dues amount of $2,700 – $5,500 for the remainder of your APA membership. Learn More
Practice Transition Resources
Psychiatrists transitioning into the next phase of their career should consult with colleagues about options and explore opportunities, such as consulting, teaching, and community service.
APA Practice Management Guides
Retirement and Risk Management
Are you taking risks that will affect your retirement? Read more from the American Professional Agency, Inc.
Additional Resources
Aging Well as a Physician
Dr. James W. Lomax, M.D. of Baylor College of Medicine and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) presents "Aging Well as a Physician" which was part of the workshop "When Hearts and Minds Conflict: Helping Cognitively Impaired Colleagues Transition Out of Clinical Practice But Preserve Their Personal Integrity" presented at the 2015 APA Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada, May 16-20.
Avoiding Burnout: Strategies for Senior Physicians – AMA Wire
“Is this a sunrise or a sunset?” Robert L. Hatch, MD, asked senior physicians during a presentation at the 2016 AMA Interim Meeting. He had shown them an image of a fisherman in a boat with the sun low on the horizon. Burnout pervades every level of a medical career, but sometimes one way to prevent it or recover from it is to reexamine your perspective and priorities.
Gabbard Describes Possibilities, Perils for Aging Physicians – Psychiatric News
Aging and retirement can be a rich period of harvesting the fruits of a busy career, mentoring young people, and cultivating new interests.
Positive Psychiatry: A Clinical Handbook
Positive Psychiatry provides a rigorous and clinically useful guide to the growing body of research that strongly suggests that positive psychosocial factors such as resilience, optimism, and social engagement are associated with better outcomes, including lower morbidity, greater longevity, and a heightened sense of patient well-being.
Positive Psychiatry of Late Life
Senior psychiatrists will play an increasingly important role as clinicians, consultants, educators, mentors and administrators. They will be invaluable in dealing with the worsening physician shortages resulting from the growing and aging population, mainly by extending their careers in clinical practice but sometimes by reentry into practice, yet organized psychiatry has paid relatively little attention to its senior members.
Senior Physicians Section – American Medical Association
Join nearly 53,000 physicians in SPS who are age 65 and above who participate in educational topics and affect policy relevant to active and retired physicians.
Successful Cognitive and Emotional Aging
The critical importance of brain health to the well-being of older adults is becoming increasingly clear. However, an important aspect that interests most people relates to what clinicians and their adult patients and family members can do to retain and even improve cognitive and emotional functioning as they age. Successful Cognitive and Emotional Aging thoroughly discusses the neuroscience of healthy aging and presents effective strategies for staying lively, engaged, and positive.
Successful Aging of Psychiatrists
The successful aging of psychiatrists is important not only to them but also to their patients and trainees. Aging is a multidimensional experience involving physical, cognitive and psychosocial functioning. While the aging of body tissues is inevitable, the aging of the mind is not. This presentation examines the successful aging of psychiatrists through a variety of models, including highlighting aging physicians continuing their research, clinical work, and more, and discusses responsiblies of instiutes and organizations to enhance the wellness of their aging psychiatrists and physicians.