WPA, in partnership with our valued member society, The Russian Society of Psychiatrists (RSP)  invites you to save-the-date for WPA’s Regional Congress in Saint Petersburg, Russia «Interdisciplinary understanding of co-morbidity in psychiatry: from science to integrated care” 5-7 May 2020. Whether you are a psychiatrist or other mental health professional, policy maker or service user, this is an event you won’t want to miss!

The new high-technology research possibilities have opened a new era in the study of mental disorders, along with advances in psychological fields of psychiatric and mental health research.  Recent data  from basic sciences have opened a new perspective on the understanding of comorbidity of mental and somatic disorders, as well as comorbidity and syndromes overlapping between different groups of mental disorders themselves. This faces specialists with a challenge to reconsider the existing understanding and classification approach to mental illnesses.

Recent findings in  genetics and epigenetics  raise new questions to work on in the nearest future. Should we define new illnesses with mental and somatic syndromes prevailing at the different stages of the disease?

We all know that the “genome just loads the gun and it is the environment that pulls the trigger”. In this framework can psychotherapy be considered as an epigenetic modulator? This will be one of the new targets of research in the next decade.

Speaking about practical issues, we have to admit that the implementation of interdisciplinary care in everyday practice needs our further common efforts and we have failed so far to achieve this standard. The congress will give the opportunity for brainstorming on how can we achieve it.

This time the congress is to be held in Saint-Petersburg – one of the most beautiful cities of Russia, the so-called Venice of the North, the city that was built by a constellation of talented architects from all over the world – at the most inspiring time on the eve of the white nights.

We are very pleased to inform you that now congress website https://wpa2020spb.com is opened and you are very welcome to submit your abstracts until February 5, 2020.