Welcome address to the 3rd World Congress of Cultural psychiatry, London 2012.
By Goffredo Bartocci: President of WACP
We are now approaching the eve of the 3rd World Congress of Cultural Psychiatry. Thanks to you the members for your participation in the triennial World Congresses organized by the WACP, I can affirm that we have arrived at this important meeting sailing across calm and smooth waters.
Having been deeply engaged in the evolution of the WACP ever since its foundation, I look upon the London meeting with a deep-set awareness: the historical significance and importance of this international centre for the third World Congress of Cultural Psychiatry is self evident.
Indeed, this meeting does not only promise an update on the cultural psychiatry issues that are regularly proposed during our Congresses. The 3rd WCCP confirms the breadth of its mission exactly through the focus placed on the problems of a crucial population for all possible ethnic groups: young people.
Let me briefly shed some light on the path pursued by the WACP and its most relevant initiatives.
The 1st WCCP, Current Perspectives On Research And Clinical Issues In Cultural Psychiatry Around The World, was held in Beijing in 2006. It was at this meeting that we established the Association formally. Since then, Chairman Prof. W.S. Tseng has stressed the fact that the strength of the WACP lies precisely in being entirely free of constraints vis-à-vis institutions or ideologies capable of misguiding the mission that we decided to pursue: an approach in anthropology and psychiatry aimed at understanding the needs of patients coming from any cultural and social background. At the same time, we were aware of having to concentrate our efforts on providing training for scholars in human sciences, enabling them to guarantee both clinical skills and flexibility in their choice of treatment. This theoretical and pragmatic flexibility proved to be effective also in the 2nd WCCP Cultural Brain And Living Societies held in Norcia (2009). On that occasion, we fully complied with WACP’s theoretical and operational premises by delving into specific cultural psychiatry issues and enriching our epistemological experience by comparing apparently distant fields of study like neuroscience and cultural beliefs.
It is by building on this foundation that the 3rd WCCP (2012) represents, in the most appropriate location possible, the international consolidation of our scientific discipline. London is one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world and I am certain that, thanks to the hard work of Prof. Kam Bhui and his team, we will find scientific rigour combined with the fraternal hospitality that have always characterized our encounters.
Our inherited conglomerate of experiences drives me to be sure that this 3rd WCCP will put forward innovative and ground-breaking forms of psychiatry that are truly multi-disciplinary based on observation, interpretation, prevention and not only objectification. The results achieved by scholars of culture have reached an excellent level of maturity disclosing a transversal knowledge common to anthropology, social sciences, phenomenology, cross-cultural psycho-dynamics and even neuroscience. I have no doubt in asserting therefore that never like now does Cultural Psychiatry have the task of promoting democracy in the study of human sciences. It is an extremely demanding challenge. This is what we’ve been working towards all along and this is also what we must resolutely continue to pursue in the future.
This is the heritage of challenges that are now being passed down to the 3rd WCCP: an event that will undoubtedly turn out to be exceptional thanks to all the helping professionals who are aware that without a cultural approach, any psychological diagnostic and therapeutic activity would stop on the threshold of partiality, if the interpretation of mental disorder is only viewed as mono-cultural. I would therefore like to warmly invite you all to take part in this Congress, knowing that it will turn out to be a pleasant and fruitful event for everybody.
See you all soon.
Kind regards,
Goffredo Bartocci
