Medical Politics is a fraught business. At the national level, it is about getting laws enabled that meet the needs of your patients, be that permission to transfer people to centres of excellence for transplants (because transplant units have to do so many per year to remain skilled) to funding psychotherapy.

The best practitioner of this I have seen is Patrick McGorry, who was Australian of the year. He made alliances with people who he would never have voted for and continued to get funding not merely for his area (which is early intervention in psychosis) but for mental health in Australia.

The president of the American Psychiatric Association has the same attitude. This is from her column after the election of Mr Trump.

We do have one solid advantage: mental health is a bipartisan issue that affects millions of Americans of all ages and backgrounds. It is for that reason that we pledge to work with President-elect Trump’s administration to ensure these Americans get the care they need. Indeed, APA has long been working with both parties toward passage of the Mental Health Reform Act of 2015 (S 1945), a bipartisan bill introduced by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-Pa.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). As well, we worked with Reps. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) to pass the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015 (HR 2646). In fact, in July HR 2646 passed by a jaw-dropping vote of 422 to 2 in the House to promote evidence-based psychiatric care and research activities, improve enforcement of mental health parity, ensure better coordination of federal mental health resources, and address the critical psychiatric workforce shortage, among others.

While APA gains strength from having a membership with diverse political viewpoints, the Association will always speak in a unified voice to represent the interests of our patients and remain dedicated to achieving comprehensive mental health reform and enforcing parity. This is what is best for our patients and by extension our profession. As president-elect and then as president, Mr. Trump will be spending the next four years implementing decisions that will impact our patients. APA, along with our advocacy partners, needs to bring our perspective to the table and ensure that people with mental illness have access to the high-quality mental health care that they deserve.

There are many who are protesting and complaining and talking boycotts of this or that. As professionals, e do not have that ability. We have to continue to see our patients and clients and make the system, work.

Particularly if it is imperfect, flawed, unfair, arbitrary, and going bankrupt.

So Kudos to Dr Oquendo. She is doing her duty. Regardless of how she voted: she has too much grace to reveal that.