Ipsit Vahia, MD

Dr. Ipsit Vahia, MD, is a geriatric psychiatrist, clinician, and researcher. He is the interim chief of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry and director of Digital Psychiatry Translation at McLean Hospital. He is also director of the Technology and Aging Laboratory. His research focuses on the use of technology and informatics in the assessment and management of older adults and currently, he oversees a clinical and research program on aging, behavior, and technology. He has published extensively in major international journals and textbooks.

Dr. Vahia serves on the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Council on Geriatric Psychiatry and the Geriatric Psychiatry Committee of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He has served on the board of directors of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) and on the editorial boards of five journals including his current role as social media editor of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. He is a recipient of several prestigious awards including the 2016 AAGP Barry Lebowitz Award and the 2014 APA Hartford Jeste Award.

Trisha Cardillo, MD, MSc

Dr. Trisha Cardillo is a 4th year psychiatry resident at Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, Florida. She came to medicine via a highly non-traditional route. After working for the Social Security Administration as a disability adjudicator and trainer, she transitioned into disability advocacy as a senior legal assistant for disability attorneys in the Atlanta area. She is the Past President of the National Association of Disability Representatives (NADR), a professional association dedicated to training attorney and non-attorney representatives in the nuances of Social Security Disability and advocating for representatives and the disabled community. She has lectured on a wide variety of disability topics at national conferences, assisted SSA on various task forces in implementing the electronic disability claims process, and was invited to speak at the Institutes of Medicine’s Symposium on methods for revising the Listing of Impairments – SSA’s disability medical criteria. In addition to developing and presenting conferences in continuing legal education, NADR was instrumental in passing legislation that granted parity to specialized non-attorney representatives, and Dr. Cardillo was among the first group to be granted eligibility. She had represented adults and children in disability claims against the Social Security Administration in her own private practice for over fifteen years when an Administrative Law Judge shared an idea after a hearing that would alter the course of her life: that she consider turning her passion for the medical aspects of disability claims into helping patients heal, by going to medical school. Intensive study and pursuit of a Masters’ degree in virology and immunology led her to attend medical school at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. While she enjoyed every rotation, her heart was in psychiatry, especially for patients with severe mental illness. 

She achieved her dream of becoming a doctor and matched into Memorial Healthcare System’s psychiatric residency in 2020, with baptism by fire throughout the Covid pandemic. Memorial’s program was new, having just launched in 2019. This granted Dr. Cardillo a unique opportunity to channel her experiences and skills from her former career into assisting in the growth and development of the residency program throughout her training. Her dedication to her patients, her program and to her fellow residents led to her being selected as Memorial’s Outstanding Psychiatry Resident of 2023.  Dr. Cardillo currently serves on Memorial Psychiatry’s Curriculum Steering Committee, helping to craft and deliver didactics, launch academic psychiatry and career development tracks for residents, and expand fourth-year elective offerings. In addition, she serves as a research mentor for her fellow residents. In keeping with her love for and commitment to life-long learning, she was honored to be appointed as the Florida Psychiatric Society’s Chair of the Continuing Medical Education committee for 2023-2024. She is actively interviewing for outpatient psychiatrist opportunities in Florida beginning in July 2024 and hopes to become a core faculty member for a psychiatric residency program. She remains passionate about serving the disabled and in demystifying the disability process for patients and providers.

John Tucker, Esq.

John V. Tucker is the Principal of Tucker Law Group, P.A., a law firm with a national VA Service-Connected Compensation and ERISA Disability Insurance law practice headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida.  Mr. Tucker was admitted to practice law in 1991, and Tucker Disability now has 16 employees in 5 states. He has received the highest ratings from his peers for legal ability and ethics.  Mr. Tucker is nationally published and has lectured on a wide variety of disability topics at national conferences, including Veterans Service-Connected Compensation and proving disability claims in court. 

Mr. Tucker is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the National Organization of Veterans Advocates (NOVA).  He is a past national chair of the ERISA Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice and a Past-President of the St. Petersburg Bar Association. In addition to his law practice, Mr. Tucker served for several years as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Stetson University College of Law. 

David Mintz, MD

David Mintz, M.D., is a graduate of the University of Miami School of Medicine and the Cambridge Hospital/Austen Riggs Center Combined Residency Program.  He completed a Fellowship in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy at the Austen Riggs Center, where he remained on staff as Treatment Team Leader, Director of Psychiatric Education and Associate Director of Training in the Fellowship in Psychotherapy and Adult Psychoanalysis. At the Austen Riggs Center, Dr Mintz is engaged in intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy with complex, multiply co-morbid, and “treatment-resistant” patients.  Over the last 2 decades, he has devoted much of his attention to elucidating Psychodynamic Psychopharmacology as a technical approach for working with pharmacologic treatment resistance, and he has written and presented widely on the subject.  His book Psychodynamic Psychopharmacology: Caring for the Treatment-Resistant Patient, and over a dozen other papers, explores these principles.  Dr. Mintz’s other academic interests include psychodynamic aspects of medical education and developmental processes involved in becoming a psychiatrist.  He is the recent past leader of the Psychotherapy Caucus of the American Psychiatric Association.

Gregory Sullivan, MD

Dr. Greg Sullivan is a graduate of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and completed both general psychiatry residency and geriatric psychiatry fellowships at the University of South Florida. He currently serves as Geriatric Psychiatrist providing inpatient consultation-liaison services to the short-term rehabilitation and long-term care units of the James A. Haley VA Hospital in Tampa and is the Director of the Electroconvulsive Therapy Program. He is an assistant professor of psychiatry with the University of South Florida, where he serves as program director for the geriatric psychiatry fellowship and chair of the Graduate Medical Education Wellness Committee. His clinical and academic interests include the overlapping specialties of geriatric and consult psychiatry, particularly as these relate to advanced assessments of decision-making capacity, assessment and management of complex delirium, and care of aging LGBT patients. Dr. Sullivan is also a proud advocate for older adults as President-Elect of the Florida Geriatrics Society and chair of that organization’s Advocacy and Public Policy Committee.

Dawn Bowers, PhD, ABPP-CN

Dr. Bowers is a university professor, a clinical neuroscientist, and a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist. She has longstanding expertise in neurocognitive and emotional changes associated with neurologic diseases including Parkinson Disease and Alzheimer’s disease. She has been continuously research funded for over 38 years, with multiple R01’s. She currently directs several randomized clinical trials focused on novel interventions for cognitive decline, in vivo methods (real time fMRI) for modulating emotional-cognitive reactivity, and psychophysiologic signatures of depression and apathy. She is strongly committed to research training, has mentored over 25 doctoral students, directs the UF  Post-doctoral program in Clinical Neuropsychology, and serves as the MPI for an NINDS-funded T32 predoctoral grant focused on Interdisciplinary Training in Movement Disorders. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and has held leadership positions within various professional organizations (International Neuropsychological Society, Division 40 of APA).

Anna C. Sever, MS

Anna C. Sever, MS, presently serves as the director of the Florida Statewide Office for Suicide Prevention. In this role, she develops initiatives and coordinates the state’s suicide prevention efforts. She also works on Florida’s 250-million-dollar opioid response grant, which connects individuals at risk for opioid use with prevention, recovery, and treatment services. Before stepping into these roles, she worked on the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline planning grant at the Office of Substance Abuse and Mental Health in Florida’s Department of Children and Families, and as a crisis counselor for the 2-1-1 Big Bend helpline.

Shine

run time: 1 hr. 45 min - post-film discussion: 15-30 min

Shine is a biographical psychological drama film based on the life of David Helfgott, a child piano prodigy, starring Geoffrey Rush and Lynn Redgrave. Helfgott's musical ambitions generate friction with his overbearing father, Peter. When Helfgott travels to London on a musical scholarship, his career as a pianist blossoms. However, the pressures of his newfound fame, coupled with the echoes of his tumultuous childhood, conspire to bring Helfgott's latent schizophrenia boiling to the surface, and he spends years in and out of various mental institutions. In 1996, Geoffrey Rush was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 69th Academy Awards for his performance in the lead role.