Jan
01
Creative Resilience: Harnessing Uncertainty to Achieve Balance
Miriam Hamideh, Ph.D. 
It is an honor to once again be a part of LACPA leadership, now joining you as President for the 2023 term. To better demonstrate my commitment to LACPA and to our profession, I would like to share a little about my personal, educational, and professional journey.
I have been working as a psychologist since 1990. My journey began at the Catholic University of Pelotas (UCPEL) in Brazil, where I found my passion for psychology. I then moved to Buenos Aires, where I worked at a private psychiatric clinic and wrote my doctoral thesis at Belgrano University.
It is an honor to join you as LACPA’s 2022 president. To share a little about me, I have been a practicing psychologist for the past 25 years, most of it in Los Angeles. The first 10 years, I worked as a staff psychologist at the Los Angeles County Jail. After a brief side trip to Shanghai with my family from 2008 - 2010, where I worked as a psychologist serving the expatriate community, I started my private practice, which has since expanded to a group practice specializing in eating disorders.
Four years and seven months ago (or thereabouts) I began my journey in LACPA leadership as a student representative, and somehow I find myself here today as LACPA’s incoming president for 2020. For those familiar with the responsibility this entails, you would be forgiven for asking why someone would want to do this! Stepping into this role comes with a host of meetings, events, speeches, and a truly untoward amount of emails on top of everyday practice and home life. Nietzsche is quoted as saying, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” The duties of LACPA’s presidency are enjoyable and rewarding, save the emails, but as I have watched our past-presidents shoulder this responsibility, I realized I would need a compelling why of my own to make it through.
My name is Leticia C. Amick and my journey in LACPA leadership began as a committee member - the Networking committee to be specific - and later on as Secretary and President-Elect on the Board. In January I’ll begin my term as President with – I must admit – a little trepidation but also with a sense of gratitude to be so intimately involved with LACPA. I face this opportunity knowing how important this organization is to me and hopefully to all of you too.
Here I am writing my first President’s Column (actually, I’m still President-Elect for a few more days) for the LA Psychologist and introducing my theme for 2018 – Self-Care and Balance. When I first thought about writing these columns, I considered researching the topic and reading a bunch of scholarly articles. Then I reconsidered and decided that I’d be practicing much better self-care by reading a sci-fi novel in my backyard!
