There are two candidates for NCPS 2024-2025 President-Elect / President (2025-2026). 

The winner of the special election will serve as President-Elect for the remaining weeks of the 2024-2025 Council year and will automatically become President at the Council turnover, which coincides with the APA Annual Meeting in May.
 

Please see their Bio's and Candidate Statements below and cast your ballot before May 4, 2025 at 11:59pm. 

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Parnika Saxena, MD, FAPA Bio: 

Nominated by the NCPS Nominations Committee as well as by the NCPS Council.

Parnika P Saxena earned her MBBS degree from Maharashtra University of Health Sciences in India in 2010. Following her graduation, Dr. Saxena completed a research fellowship in clinical psychopharmacology at McLean Hospital and pursued a General Psychiatry residency at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton, MA where she also served as the Chief Resident. Her dedication to the field continued with a Fellowship in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and followed by a Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Saxena holds board certifications in General Psychiatry and Geriatric Psychiatry and is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and is a member of the American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Within Northern California Psychiatric Society serving as Councilor-at-Large for 2023-2024 and currently as Treasurer. She has also held key positions in the California State Association for Psychiatrists (CSAP), including Vice Chair and subsequently Chair of the Government Affairs Committee. Her previous roles include APA Representative and Council member for the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society, and Chair of the Public Sector Committee.

She works as a Clinical Associate Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine where she also serves as the Program Director for the Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship. Additionally, she practices as a Geriatric Psychiatrist at Stanford Hospital, providing inpatient and outpatient services, along with electroconvulsive therapy.  

Parnika Saxena, MD, FAPA Candidate Statement:

 It is an honor to be nominated for the position of President-Elect (2024-2025) / President (2025-2026) of the Northern California Psychiatric Society (NCPS). As the current Treasurer of NCPS and the Chair of the Government Affairs Committee in CSAP (California State Association of Psychiatrists), I am focused on advancing the leadership role of psychiatrists in mental health, advocating for improved healthcare systems, and fostering greater involvement of early-career psychiatrists in the field.

I currently work on the inpatient psychiatry unit as a geriatric psychiatrist as well as an ECT physician at Stanford Hospital, where I work with patients facing serious mental illness and struggling to access appropriate mental health care. I also spent five years at a federally qualified health center in Massachusetts, where my experiences highlighted significant gaps in healthcare delivery that affected not only patients but also their families and the community at large. These experiences fueled the passion to advocate for comprehensive healthcare systems which can treat the individual as a whole. Currently, I am also a psychiatrist representative in a primary care and behavioral workgroup which is run by the Department of Healthcare Access and Information. As the sole psychiatry stakeholder, I have had the opportunity to hear perspectives from other members of healthcare including representatives of provider organizations, hospital systems and health plans and have had the opportunity to provide information about the limitations of delivery of mental health care in the system, ideas to improve upon it and so on. 

Furthermore, as a fellowship director at Stanford University and through my ongoing work with residents and medical students, I have become increasingly convinced that engaging every physician and physician-in-training in advocacy is essential to fulfilling the mission of the NCPS: to enhance the quality and effectiveness of psychiatric care through advocacy, professional education, and camaraderie. In these challenging times, strong physician representation is crucial for advocating for both patient care and our own well-being. Over the past five years, we've faced a mental health crisis and physician burnout of epidemic proportions, and it's our responsibility to raise awareness from the front lines.

In addition to my work in advocacy, I was fortunate to be elected to the role of Treasurer last year.  The Treasurer of an organization as large as the NCPS must understand the breadth of fiscal and ethical responsibility as well as appreciate the in-depth working of the organization as well other organizations it has relationships with. In addition to overseeing financial transparency and managing the budget, my role also involved strategically managing assets to ensure the successful realization of NCPS's vision which also deepened my understanding of the organization's inner workings.

The role of the President-Elect (2024-2025) / President (2025-2026) includes serving the members through the Council and Executive Council as well as supporting and assisting the Committees with their many roles and responsibilities. With my work in advocacy as well as my experience in serving multiple roles in the Council and Executive Council, I feel confident in my ability to represent our society in the role of a President-Elect (2024-2025) / President (2025-2026). 

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Samuel Ridout, MD, PhD Bio:

Nominated by a peer in response to a membership-wide nominations request.

I obtained my PhD in cardiovascular physiology from The Pennsylvania State University in 2011. I graduated with my MD from the same institution in 2013 and completed my psychiatry residency at Brown University in 2017. During residency I had the good fortune to participate in an NIH R25-funded post-doctoral research position concurrent with my residency work. I have worked for The Permanente Medical Group since 2017 and have additional experience working in various clinical environments such as small community inpatient psychiatry work, community mental health centers, state hospitals, large academic medical centers and outpatient psychiatry. I remain heavily involved in graduate medical education and research in my current role and spend much of my time teaching and developing educational resources for residents and those mentoring residents in scholarly activity. I additionally participate in the development and maintenance of practice guidelines for Kaiser Permanente at the national level.

In addition to the above professional activities, I have started multiple transcranial magnetic stimulation clinics and serve on various committees for the Clinical TMS Society. I participate heavily in development of digital resources for mental health care, implementation of these resources and assessing effectiveness of them. Lastly, I continue to publish in the peer-reviewed literature and maintain my own research portfolio, continuing my >20 years of participation in the biomedical research enterprise. 

 Samuel Ridout, MD, PhD Candidate Statement:

It is my distinct honor to be nominated for the position of NCPS President-Elect (2024-2025) / President (2025-2026). I have been a practicing psychiatrist in California since 2017 and believe my unique background and skill set make me an appropriate choice for this position. As a founding member of the psychiatry residency at Kaiser Permanente in San Jose I place a high value on resident and medical student education and shaping the future of our specialty.  I continue to serve as the scholarly activity director for that program and firmly believe that the growth recent years have seen in mental health research is an entirely positive development for our field and benefits both patients and practitioners. Additionally, I have served in various local, regional and national capacities related to implementation of digital mental health (apps and other digital interventions) resources to extend care and to assess the quality of such tools.  I have had the good fortune to work with the APA in this area as well as lifestyle psychiatry.

Were I to be elected to the Presidency my priority areas will be:

1. Continuing to cement relationships with GME and UME around the region
2. Continuing to position the NCPS as a trusted resource among university and community health systems throughout the region and build those relationships
3. Continue building the NCPS presence in advocacy, lobbying, and coordinating with partners such as the APA and members to guide our action list

Thank you for your consideration and the opportunity to offer service to the organization. From undergraduate medical education through career-long networking and mentorship professional societies like the NCPS serve a critical role and can/should be a consolidating and supportive presence for us all.  I humbly seek your vote to offer my energy to support this important effort. 

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