In the news: Advocacy and challenges in child psychiatry

Adelaide Robb, MD, chief of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Children’s National Hospital, chose to pursue child psychiatry after her work with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the bipolar disorders branch. There, she collaborated with families to collect DNA for research in exchange for ongoing psychiatric care. Through this experience, Dr. Robb discovered the significant delays children faced in receiving accurate Bipolar diagnoses and appropriate treatment.

“I thought about how hard it was for people to wait so many years to get an appropriate diagnosis. Parents had told me that psychiatrists in DC did not believe in pediatric bipolar disorder and I thought they were wrong, that our nation’s child psychiatrists knew better, but in fact the parents were correct.”

Dr. Robb recently joined the Washington Psychiatric Society (WPS) to talk about her pivotal career moments, the importance of advocacy work and the challenges facing the field of child psychiatry. Learn more about her thoughts on the WPS podcast.