This major international event reflects the College’s high standards in education, training and research with streams on new research, psychopharmacology, neuropsychiatry, psychosis, treatment, clinical skills, management & leadership and new science amongst others.
As always our programme strives for scientific rigour and to lead the way in developing clinical excellence and promoting best practice. We are committed to ensuring that attendees leave with an improved understanding of psychiatry and mental health and the interactions between mental health, neuroscience and the social and cultural context in which people live.
With a projected attendance of over 1,500 delegates from more than 40 different countries, the congress will offer numerous networking opportunities as well as a full programme of social events.
This congress is eligible for a total of 24 CPD / CME points
WELCOME MESSAGEPsychiatry: Medicine’s Heartland‘A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other’
Charles Dickens in a Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Welcome to the Barbican, London for our 2014 International Congress, themed ‘Psychiatry: Medicine’s heartland’. The heartland is the central or most important part of an area or field of activity and, as mental health is integral to well being and good physical health, psychiatry is surely Medicine’s heartland.
The Barbican is a fitting venue for us as it is a heartland for the arts, being Europe’s largest performing arts centre. A little bit like psychiatry itself, the Centre has caused controversy and divided opinion. Its building’s design has both been voted ‘London’s ugliest building’ and been designated as a sight of ‘special architectural interest’.
Near the Barbican, St Paul’s Cathedral is part of the background scenery in many of the works of the famous London novelist, Charles Dickens. Dickens lived in London during a time of great societal change, the Industrial Revolution, and spent hours walking the City streets, using his unique powers of observation to record what he saw for posterity. He achieved great fame and fortune through his works but suffered from recurrent depression and mania that eventually cut short his writing career. It did not, however, make him politically correct with regard to mental illness and he used the term ‘Bedlam’ for any act of foolishness in his novels. Bedlam was the nickname for the old Bethlem Hospital, Europe’s first mental health hospital, which was in Dickens’ time situated in Southwark.
This year has been an exciting one for the College in that we moved in to our new premises at 21 Prescot Street, very close to the original site for Bethlem. We hope you will have time to come and look round the facilities at the new building. Free tours (bookable online or through the registration form) and the annual AGM will be taking place there on Tuesday 24th June.
We hope that you will enjoy being in our exciting Capital City but even more we hope you will enjoy the Scientific Programme we bring you. As always attendance at the entire Programme and all refreshments are included in the registration fee. There will be a trainee lounge again this year.
Organizing Committee chairs: Helen Miller, Nick Craddock and Alice Lomax
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