Programme

A detailed programme will be released shortly. In the meantime, please review the key themes that will be explored at the conference.

Topic 1: Mental health in times of war and trauma

The occurrence of a variety of psychological symptoms and syndromes among populations living in war-torn countries has been widely documented. Women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities are among the most vulnerable groups. Incidence is related to the degree of trauma and the availability of physical and emotional support. 

People in war and conflict situations need to receive mental health care as part of their overall support, rehabilitation and recovery processes. This also applies to refugees who have found shelter and protection in other countries. Are mental health consequences and their severity universal? How should a case requiring intervention be determined? How should psychological needs be measured and addressed? What are the long-term consequences of stress-related symptoms and syndromes?

Topic 2: Digitalization and AI in mental health services and research

Rapid urbanization in many countries in Europe and the world has erased the boundaries of traditional public spaces. For a large part of the population, these are becoming increasingly digital, separated from physical spaces but connected to each other through shared interests or knowledge.

The gradual introduction of artificial intelligence into medicine will inevitably impact psychiatric practices and services. Telemedicine approaches in psychiatric practice and the use of AI by practitioners could be seen as a partial compensation for the lack of sufficient mental health professionals, helping to establish a live connection in remote areas. However, the live connection between a mental health professional and a client is of paramount importance in this field. This contradiction needs to be addressed by developing specific regulations for the use of new technologies. It is important to analyze and assess the impact of these new practices on the mental health of clients and to outline and respect the limitations. At the same time, there are a number of challenges and risks in the use of innovative technologies. Ensuring confidentiality, the limitations of AI, which cannot replace human empathy and intuition, addiction to technology require a balance of approaches to achieve effective and ethical care.

Investing in and designing new, better mental health care systems with the participation of experts with personal experience is becoming increasingly important. Although there are high expectations for digital technologies to improve access to mental health services and support, the use of these technologies creates new challenges that directly affect mental health (e.g. the risk of increasing addictive behaviors), while introducing new potential gaps in access (the so-called digital divide).

Topic 3: Discrimination, equality and human rights

If it was previously assumed that having a mental health policy was a sufficient condition for the respect for human rights and protection from stigma and discrimination, today an evidence-based approach is needed in any mental health service to ensure equality for service users with mental health problems. Equity implies treatment sufficiency, accessibility, quality and effectiveness for all those in need. Furthermore, the approach to the provision of somatic and psychiatric services must be the same, and the integration of psychiatric care and psychosocial rehabilitation into the overall service system must be guaranteed. 

Although there are now more mental health policies and plans than ever before, their implementation remains poorly evaluated in terms of organisation, processes, outcomes and impact. Many programmes and policies do not have built-in monitoring and evaluation indicators and/or are not developed in collaboration with the people they will ultimately support. Authentic efforts are needed on the part of service planners to use the rich expertise of people with personal experience to ensure that policies are built and implemented in the interests of their beneficiaries.

Topic 4: Innovations in the evaluation of mental health services

All mental health professionals – professionals, policymakers, managers, experts with personal experience, their families – must accept the challenge of developing innovative effective responses to the constantly changing definitions of community, the sensitivity of mental health services and the associated needs for monitoring, evaluation and understanding their long-term effects. Understanding and using new technologies would allow better planning, implementation and measurement of the impact of interventions. The application of innovations in relevant sectors such as education, social work, housing, law, employment, transport, arts and culture, sport can play a significant role in mental health well-being.

Investing in innovations with sufficient funding would mean focusing on the recovery and reintegration of the person into society, rather than on the disease. This would give a significant advantage to preventive and promotional interventions in terms of treatment, care and rehabilitation. In this way, old practices of insufficient funding, ineffective services and lack of evidence for the importance of interventions can be overcome.

This topic will cover cutting-edge innovations in academic disciplines (e.g., madness and survivorship studies, citizen science), research designs (e.g., realistic assessment, adaptive trials), data sources (e.g., wearable environmental devices, big data), interventions (e.g., patient-controlled admissions, Recovery Colleges), digital interventions (e.g., recommender systems, natural language processing), data analytics (e.g., network meta-analysis, qualitative meta-synthesis), and ethical, epistemological, and political issues related to mental health care, including collective approaches (e.g., community action, social movements).