Dr Vladimir Maletic Memorial Scholarship Recipient Reflects on His Legacy of Compassionate, Patient-Centered Care

The Dr Vladimir Maletic Memorial Scholarship was established to honor the life, legacy, and lasting influence of Dr Vladimir Maletic, a beloved member of the Psych Congress community and exceptional clinician and educator.

Dr Maletic’s work reflected extraordinary compassion for patients, intellectual curiosity, a commitment to lifelong learning, and a passion for advancing the treatment of mental illness. This scholarship carries his legacy forward by recognizing clinicians who embody these same values and providing them with the opportunity to attend the Psych Congress Annual Meeting.

The scholarship is awarded annually to a cohort of 5 recipients. The 2026 cohort includes:

• Pariss D’Spain, DO, General Physician and Researcher, University of Wisconsin—Madison
• Dev M. Gandhi, MD, Resident Physician, University of South Alabama
• Samuel Pereira, MD, Physician and Researcher, University of Buenos Aires
• Joseph Tran, FNP-C, PHMNP, BC, Salma Health
• Jonathan D. Waknine, PMHNP-BC, Westlake Psychiatry

In this interview at the 2026 Psych Congress, Pariss D'Spain, DO, reflects on carrying Maletic’s legacy forward. She discusses how Maletic’s ethos closely aligns with her own whole-person approach to care as an osteopathic medicine practitioner, as well as how mentorship, collaborative learning, and participant-directed work in psilocybin research have shaped her belief in each person’s capacity for healing.

The 2027 application and nomination form for The Dr Vladimir Maletic Memorial Scholarship will be released in January 2027. For more information, please visit the meeting website.

Read the Transcript

Pariss D’Spain, DO: Hi, I’m Pariss D’Spain. I'm a doctor of osteopathy and I am working as a general psychiatrist in Madison, Wisconsin. My residency training was at University of Wisconsin in Madison, which is where I started research in psilocybin studies with principal investigator Charles Raison, MD.

Psych Congress Network: As one of the first recipients of the Dr Vladimir Maletic Memorial Scholarship, what does it mean to you to help establish how Dr Maletic’s legacy will be carried forward by a new generation of psychiatrists?

D’Spain: Dr Maletic, as far as what I know about him, he came off to be a very intentionally focused individual who really cared about people and cared about the community around him. He really made a point of bringing in psychiatrists into this wave of thinking that we all have a purpose to improve people's lives and educating others serves that purpose and taking in a scope where people are seen for who they are as in their whole selves. He really cultivated a culture where psychiatrists are coming together and learning from each other in open format and encouraging one another. I just feel that when I'm here at Psych Congress, it's a very beautiful place to have doors open.

Psych Congress Network: Which aspect of Dr Maletic’s approach to patients, education, and mentorship resonates most deeply with you?

D’Spain: What resonates most deeply about Dr Maletic is his patient-centered focus. He really wanted to know the individual in front of him, what aspects of their lives have made them who they are. It seems like he really honed in on the importance of culture, identity, the biopsychosocial component of a person and not just the physiologic neurobiology. It's a “both, and” for him. He really provided a space where we can be educated in the realm of psychopharmacology, physiology. Here at Psych Congress I've seen psychotherapists, APPs, PAs who are doing incredible things and from their lens of training. So, we're all learning together as the same, it doesn't matter what background of education we come from, we're all learning something from each other.  

I'm a doctor of osteopathy. I intentionally took that route because the philosophy of practice of osteopathy really resonated with me. What that is, is seeing a person, not only as somebody who's coming in with a problem or a symptom, but also seeing them as somebody who has a whole body, mind, and spirit, and trying to focus in on where is the dysfunction actually coming from, and understanding who is a person when they are actually doing well in life. You adopt an approach of, okay, when you're doing well, what are the things that are making you feel well? Really listening in on the person's story of who they are is really important and trying to parse apart, what are the things that could be missing in their lives right now? Wee also prescribe medications and offer alternative treatments too that can provide them a sense of being well again.

Pariss D’Spain, DO, is a fourth-year psychiatry chief resident in the General Psychiatry & Psychotherapy program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with clinical training spanning inpatient, outpatient, consult-liaison, and interventional psychiatry. She serves as lead facilitator and research physician on 2 ongoing psilocybin studies under Principal Investigator Charles Raison, MD — the ENHANCE trial, examining the combined effects of psilocybin and vagus nerve stimulation, and RECAP2, a longitudinal study of psilocybin’s long-term behavioral effects. Her clinical interests in psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, and therapeutic integration, paired with a foundational background in research at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, inform a scientifically grounded and patient-centered approach to this work.