When I offered “Radically Well, Together” at the start of this year, I meant it as a challenge, not a slogan. Wellness is not something we achieve alone, and it is not something psychologists deliver from a distance. It is built in relationship—with our colleagues, our students, the people we serve, and the communities that trust us with their hardest questions.
This year put that idea to work.
Through 100 Psychologists Rising, we met colleagues applying psychological science in places most of us were never trained to imagine, and we said plainly that those pathways count. For students and early career psychologists watching a narrowing job market, that expansion of what a psychology career can be is not decoration. It is oxygen.
The Youth Mental Health Summit gathered schools, community organizations, and national partners around a generation under real strain and produced tools our members can actually use. This work culminated in a convening in Washington, D.C., at Howard University. Young people led the conversation on their mental health, pain points, and opportunities, and our policy development team translated them into recommendations during our daylong work session.
Work and Wellness took up the question of what work is doing to the people who do it, particularly those absorbing the sharpest edges of economic uncertainty. Psychology has the evidence base to shape that conversation. This year we brought it to the table and the convention stage, reckoning with not only the challenges but the opportunities for professional pivot responsive to new needs and realities.
My year was also filled thinking about leadership wellness—ours. Many of you are holding steady in institutions that are not steady: contested funding, shifting policy, colleagues leaving the field. I have tried to model what I asked of you. Rest is not a reward for finishing the work. It is essential infrastructure maintaining our health and wellness as leaders in precarious times.
In January, my dear colleague Dr. Linda M. Woolf takes the helm as APA’s 2027 president with a centering call: “Many Voices, One Psychology.” I know Linda intends to bring a steady hand to the incredible honor and responsibility that is leading our association, and I intend to support her leadership and the association through the transition.
To every member who wrote and called, to the APA staff, to the volunteer leaders who gave hours no one sees but the effect of which we all feel: thank you! The presidency is 1 year. The commitment is beyond time.
