AMSSM Mental Health Position Statement — The CJSM Podcast

Not often one gets to hang out with TWO past AMSSM presidents. R to L: Cindy Chang M.D. and Margot Putukian M.D.

CJSM has just published a new position statement (and executive summary) from the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM): Mental Health Issues and Psychological Factors in Athletes: Detection, Management, Effect on Performance, and Prevention.

These publications are fruits of a project several years in the making and requiring the labor of several individuals.  The co-chairs of the committee charged to do this work, and the two co-lead authors of the CJSM manuscript, are Cindy Chang M.D. and Margot Putukian M.D.

Drs. Chang and Putukian are, as many of the readers of the blog and listeners of the podcast know, past presidents of the AMSSM. The group they headed has produced an outstanding resource on a topical subject: the mental health of the athletes we treat.

I have always been happy to count Drs. Chang and Putukian, Cindy and Margot, as friends as well as esteemed colleagues.  Moreover, for anyone who knows them personally, it will not come as a surprise that the two have known each other for a long time and share a particularly close bond.

And so it made for a lively conversation to have them both as guests on the podcast so that they could discuss this new position statement.  It’s not often I have two guests to chat up — come to think of it, the last time that happened Dr. Chang teamed up with yet another past-president of the AMSSM, Matt Gammons.

Read the position statement and the executive summary, and find the podcast on our journal website or in our iTunes library.  And if you are heading to Atlanta in April for AMSSM’s 29th annual meeting, we’ll see you all there.