The European Psychiatric Association (EPA) produces practical guidance and position statements on topics of interest to the mental health community and beyond.

In 2009 EPA published a practical guidance on the prevention of Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes in people with severe mental illness (SMI), in consultation with and supported by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD). This joint position statement is designed to show how current European CVD prevention and diabetes guidelines can be optimally applied to patients with SMI, and how psychiatrists can incorporate cardiovascular risk assessment into their daily practice.

Downloads and prints of this article are allowed free of charge for individuals and learned societies for academic and medical use. Commercial use of the article is forbidden without special permission.

The position statement has been translated into several European languages:
Dutch version
French version
German version
Italian version
Spanish version

As a following project, EPA launched the drafting of other EPA guidance papers. EPA guidance papers include recommendations with theoretical background and examples of good practice resulting from continuous mutual exchange of information with National Psychiatric Associations and clinicians.

Prof. Wolfgang Gaebel, as the coordinator of the project, chaired together with Prof. Hans-Jürgen Möller, EPA Past President, a workshop entitled “The EPA Guidance Project” on 14 March 2011, during the 19th European Congress of Psychiatry in Vienna. On this occasion a first selection of the EPA guidance papers treating quality of mental health services, mental health promotion and illness prevention, conflict of interest and the values of antidepressants in the treatment of unipolar depression was presented.

The following EPA Guidance papers will be published soon:

EPA Guidance on Prevention of Mental Illness
J. Campion, K. Bhui, D .Bhugra

EPA Guidance on Quality of Mental Health Services
W. Gaebel, T. Becker, B. Janssen, P. Munk-Jorgensen, M. Musalek, W. Rössler, K. Sommerlad, M. Tansella, G. Thornicroft, J. Zielasek

EPA Guidance on the Conflicts of Interest
C. Höschl, L. Fialová, H.-J. Möller, R. Balon

EPA Guidance on Mental Health Promotion
G. Kalra, G.Christodoulou, R. Jenkins, V. Tsipas, N. Christodoulou, D. Lecic-Tosevski, J. Mezzich, D. Bhugra

Position statement of the EPA on the value of antidepressants in the treatment of unipolar depression
H.-J. Möller, I. Bitter, J. Bobes, K. Fountoulakis, C. Höschl, S. Kasper

EPA Guidance on Suicide Prevention
D. Wasserman, Z. Rihmer, D. Rujescu, M. Sarchiapone, M. Sokolowski, D. Titelman, G. Zalsman, Z. Zemishlany, V. Carli