Message of the President
Dear members of ISAPP,
I welcome you on the website of ISAPP and want to inform you about the developments during the last months. As you know, the international congress of ISAPP took place in Berlin from September 14th to 18th and it was a real success. We got a wonderful overview of research, theory and practice in working with adolescents. Well-known scientists and experts gave lectures and psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists from 38 countries attended the congress. It was a huge program with keynote-lectures, three main symposia each day, three State of the Art Lectures and in the afternoons ten parallel symposia or workshops. Thus, it is impossible to give you an overview of the whole congress, but see below some summaries of the keynote-lectures.
Members of ISAPP can get all abstracts, please contact Inge Knopek (i.knopek@asklepios.com) who will send it to you. Beside the abstracts we have some powerpoints of the congress, which we could send to you if you are interested and the author agrees.
Most of the abstracts will be published in the Journal of ASAP ‘Adolescence Psychiatry’. Thanks to Lois Flaherty, who is editing the presentations of the ISAPP conference for this journal.
In the meetings of the Council of Delegates, the Executive Committee and the Nominating Committee aspects of the actual and future work of ISAPP have been discussed. The Executive Committee is newly elected. Lois Flaherty accepted to be the president elect and to organize the next international congress in the United States. Beside that, we plan smaller national and international congresses of ISAPP to be more present and to activate more members. We hope that these new activities increase your interest to renew your membership and to stay in contact with us.
We are establishing a new European bank account at Deutsche Bank, which is connected with the Bank of America (in the moment still the bank account at Commerzbank). For those, who decided to become a member of ISAPP or to continue there memberships, please see ‘how to become a member or renew membership’.
Please inform us about your interests.
Annette Streeck-Fischer MD
President of ISAPP
Highlights of the congress
The 8th congress of ISAPP took place in Berlin with the topic ‘Adolescence – a second chance?’ Development – Neurobiology – Attachment – Psychotherapy – Trauma – Psychodynamic – Treatment’
Adolescence as important transitional period is often neglected by child psychiatry and adult psychiatry. Thus, it was very inspiring to meet scientists and experts from all over the world who presented actual data, developments and experiences concerning adolescents.
Especially against the background of new research findings of adolescent development Jeffrey Arnett’s lecture about the prolonged adolescence called ‘the emerging adulthood’, which continues till the age of 28 was very interesting. Thus, we are confronted with a long time of transition which allows variable views of child- and adult psychiatry.
Also the data of Pat McGorry from Australia were very informative. He showed, that psychic disorders have their peak at the age of 20 and that these disorders are the main problem in adolescence while somatic diseases are less prominent. These findings are very important because data of large samples of ill persons show that many somatic diseases (like heart diseases, obstructive bronchitis, Diabetis and addiction), are the sequelae of adverse childhood experiences and unhealthy lifestyle. We know that adolescents with adverse life histories tend to unhealthy lifestyles and may develop the above mentioned somatic diseases during their life span. Thus, it is necessary to intensively deal with adolescents and to develop preventive steps. Obviously only 50% of the female adolescents seek support and only 13% of the male adolescents. That means, that there is a great necessity to develop concepts, how to reach this group. Early therapeutic offers are necessary to avoid chronification of disorders.
Jay Giedd presented data concerning the adolescent brain and showed how sensitive this period is for the development of the brain, both in the positive and in the negative direction.
Frank Verhulst presented epidemiological data of normal and pathological developmental pathways. As the French speaking psychiatry has different perspectives and concepts compared to the Anglo-American psychiatry Philipp Jeammet’s presentation concerning concepts of psychiatric disorders including the narcissistic development was very informative. Instead of Steven Suomi, who could not participate at the congress, Pier Francesco Ferrari presented his research results on the mirror neurons. Peter Fonagy presented a new thesis concerning the development of borderline-pathology in adolescence and showed results of the therapeutic study with mentalization based therapy of adolescents, who hurt themselves.
Gil Zalsman examined the gene-environment factors in the development of depressions. Gianluigi Monniello from Italy presented special directions in psychoanalytic treatment. Finally the topic of trauma was presented by Harald Freyberger and Bessel van der Kolk. Freyberger presented data of his large studies on traumata during war, and van der Kolk spoke about the experiences with the diagnosis developmental trauma disorder which has been proposed for the DSMV committee.
