From the Editors

Focus has completed a very successful first year. We want to thank our subscribers, writers, reviewers, advisory board, and editorial boards for their help in making this a phenomenal start for a new journal and self-assessment exam. In the electronic age, launching a successful, critically acclaimed journal is no easy feat. To date, some 2,000 psychiatrists have subscribed to Focus. We look forward to serving you, our charter subscribers, and welcoming more of your colleagues aboard.

Many subscribers have sent us helpful comments and suggestions. Such feedback has been crucial in keeping Focus on the right course. As editors of a new publication whose mission is clinical education and self-assessment, we are very interested in your ideas and will continue to use them to make Focus even more useful to practicing psychiatrists.

We believe that Focus’s success is based on the journal’s relevance to clinicians. Working with the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology recertification topics and competency outline, we hope to ensure that our subject selection is synchronized with the recertification topic areas. Our aim is to make Focus a useful part of a lifelong learning and self-assessment program for psychiatrists preparing for recertification. For 2004, journal issues will focus on schizophrenia, geriatric psychiatry, anxiety disorders, and child and adolescent psychiatry.

Some of the innovations we have implemented with Focus include special presentations by Focus authors at the annual APA meetings entitled “FOCUS Live.” These 90-minute interactive sessions give clinicians an opportunity to interact with some of the experts in the field. The feedback from last year’s sessions with Jeff Jefferson and Kathleen Brady was very positive. This year we are proud to announce that there will be three sessions of FOCUS Live, led by John Lauriello, M.D. (on schizophrenia), Laura Weiss Roberts, M.D., and Paul S. Appelbaum, M.D. (on ethics and forensics), and Jonathan R. T. Davidson, M.D. (on posttraumatic stress disorder).

Last but not least, we want to thank Kristen Moeller, CME Program Manager for Focus, and Sandra Patterson, Editorial Director of APPI journals, for their hard work and dedication in helping to make Focus such a success.

We are dedicated to producing a journal that is not only relevant to the practice of psychiatry in the 21st century but also a valuable component of your plan for lifelong learning.