Previous Winners
2023
Professor Silvana Galderisi was selected by the members of the jury as the 2023 winner of the EPA Constance Pascal – Helen Boyle Prize of €10,000 for Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in Working to Improve Mental Health Care in Europe.
Silvana Galderisi, MD, PhD, is a full professor of Psychiatry, Director of the Emergency Unit of the Department of Mental Health of the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli; Coordinator of the Outpatient Unit for Anxiety and Psychotic Disorders and of the Rehabilitation Program for severe mental disorders of the same Department.
She is Chairperson and founding member of the European Group for Research in Schizophrenia (EGRIS), President of the Italian Society for Psychopathology, Past President of the European Psychiatric Association, Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Ethics of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), and Co-chair of the WPA Working Group “Implementing alternatives to coercion in Mental Health Care”.
She is a board member of the European Scientific Association on Schizophrenia and other Psychoses and of the Italian Society of Biological Psychiatry. She is Honorary Fellow of the World Psychiatric Association-WPA, Honorary Member of the Polish Psychiatric Association and of the Hungarian Psychiatric Association, International Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, International Advisor of the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology, and Honorary Fellow of the European Society of Social Psychiatry.
Her research activity focuses on Schizophrenia pathophysiology, treatment and outcomes, with particular reference to the domains of negative symptoms and cognition and their impact on psychosocial outcomes. She is an author/co-author of more than 400 publications, in national and international journals and books, and a member of the Editorial Boards of several international psychiatric journals. She is Editor in Chief of Schizophrenia Bulletin Open, and handling editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry Open.
The EPA warmly congratulates Prof. Galderisi on this well-deserved distinction, which recognises her exceptional contribution towards better mental health care in Europe.
2022
Professor Danuta Wasserman was selected by the members of the jury as the 2022 winner of the EPA Constance Pascal – Helen Boyle Prize of €10,000 for Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in Working to Improve Mental Health Care in Europe.
Prof. Wasserman is a Univ. Prof. Dr. Med. in Psychiatry and Suicidology and the current Director and Founding Head of the National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention of Mental Ill-Health at Karolinska Institutet. Prof. Wasserman is also the Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research, Methods Development and Training in Suicide Prevention and assists in the development of suicide preventive research and suicide preventive programmes on five continents. Prof. Wasserman is the President-Elect of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), incoming as President in 2023 – 2026.
Prof. Wasserman has won several national and international honours and awards. Prof. Wasserman has also authored numerous scientific articles, reports and book chapters. Prof. Wasserman’s research activities comprise epidemiological, psychodynamic and genetic studies of suicidal behaviours. She was responsible for organising several national and international conferences in psychiatry and suicidology.
Since 2021, Prof. Wasserman’s leads a global COVID-19 BIC project to prevent suicide together with the WPA, supported by the European Investment Bank. Since 2000, she serves as the Principal Investigator for the Genetic Investigation of Suicide and Attempted Suicide Project, funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Research Foundation in Sweden. Prof. Wasserman’s serves as a consultant to the mental health promotion and suicide preventive studies among youth to several universities in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the United States.
Prof. Wasserman is the chair and a member of several national and international working groups on mental health promotion and suicide prevention.
The EPA warmly congratulates Prof. Wasserman on this well-deserved distinction, which recognises her exceptional contribution towards better mental health care in Europe.
2021
Professor Michaela Amering was selected by the members of the jury as the winner of the EPA Constance Pascal – Helen Boyle Prize of €10,000 for Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in Working to Improve Mental Health Care in Europe for 2021!
Prof. Amering is a psychiatrist and Professor at the Division of Social Psychiatry of the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. The main focus of her clinical, teaching and research activities is on the situation of persons with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and their families and friends. She is a proponent of the concept and practice of ‘Trialogue’, a setting which allows communication and collaboration on equal footing between people with a lived experience of mental health problems, their families and friends, and mental health professionals, generating a specific and independent form of acquisition and production of knowledge.
Michaela Amering remains an active member of the EPA Section on Women, Gender and Mental Health, and served on the Section’s Committee for many years. Gender has been her longstanding research interest in terms of both clinical significance and policy implications as well as highlighting the situation of women in academic psychiatry.
Her book ‘Recovery in Mental Health: Reshaping Scientific and Clinical Responsibilities’ was one of the first monographs on a topic with rapidly growing international impact, and she and her co-author Margit Schmolke received the 2010 Medical Journalists’ Association Open Book Award for specialist readership.
Michaela Amering is a frequent speaker and organizer at international conferences. Her more than 150 publications consist of papers in mostly peer-reviewed journals, books and book chapters. Her professional experience includes work in research and community psychiatry in the USA, the UK, Germany and Ireland as well as involvement in international organisations such as the European Psychiatric Association (EPA), the World Association of Psychosocial Rehabilitation (WAPR) and the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), where she enjoys Honorary Membership as a Fellow. She is a board member of the Austrian Association of Social Psychiatry, recipient of the 2020 Austrian Award for Innovation in Social Psychiatry, and an Honorary Fellow of the European Society of Social Psychiatry (ESSP) as well as of the World Association of Social Psychiatry (WASP).
The EPA warmly congratulates Prof. Amering on this well-deserved distinction, which recognises her exceptional contribution towards better mental health care in Europe.
2020
Professor Til Wykes was selected by the members of the jury as the winner of the EPA Constance Pascal – Helen Boyle Prize of €10,000 for Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in Working to Improve Mental Health Care in Europe for 2020!
Prof. Wykes is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Rehabilitation and Vice Dean of Psychology and Systems Sciences at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. She has been involved in research on rehabilitation for many years both in the development of services and the evaluation of innovative psychological treatments for psychosis. She founded and is now Co-Director of the Service User Research Enterprise (SURE), which employs expert researchers with experience of using mental health services.
She edits the Journal of Mental Health and is NIHR Senior Spokesperson on Mental Health Research. She was awarded a Damehood recently for her work in mental health.
The EPA wishes to congratulate Prof. Wykes on this well-deserved distinction, which recognises her exceptional contribution towards better mental health care in Europe.
The prize was awarded to Prof. Wykes during the 28th European Congress of Psychiatry in July 2020.
2019
Prof. Helen Killaspy was selected by the members of the jury as the winner of the “EPA Constance Pascal – Helen Boyle Prize of €10,000 for Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in Working to Improve Mental Health Care in Europe” for 2019!
Helen Killaspy is Professor and Honorary Consultant in Rehabilitation Psychiatry at University College London and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust in the UK. She leads national and international programmes of research that focus on the assessment of quality of care for people with complex mental health problems and the evaluation of complex interventions for this group.
Further details on Prof. Helen Killaspy’s professional experience are available in her short biography.
The EPA wishes to congratulate Prof. Killaspy on this well-deserved distinction, which recognizes her exceptional contribution towards better mental health care in Europe.
Prof. Killaspy was awarded during the Opening Ceremony of the 27th European Congress of Psychiatry, on 6 April 2019 in Warsaw, Poland.
2018
Prof. Anita Riecher-Rössler was selected as the winner of the “EPA Constance Pascal – Helen Boyle Prize of €10 000 for Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in Working to Improve Mental Health Care in Europe”.
Prof. Anita Riecher-Rössler is Head of the Center for Gender Research and Early Detection at the Psychiatric University Clinics in Basel, Switzerland. She has specialised in psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, consultation & liaison psychiatry and gerontopsychiatry. In 1998, she became the first woman to be appointed to a full chair for psychiatry in a German speaking country. Her research interests include schizophrenic psychoses, gender differences in mental disorders, and mental disorders in women. Further details on Prof. Riecher-Rössler’s professional background are available in her short biography.
The EPA warmly congratulates Prof. Anita Riecher-Rössler on this well-deserved prize, which recognises her outstanding role in working towards better mental health care in Europe.
The prize was awarded during the Opening Ceremony of the 26th European Congress of Psychiatry, on 3 March 2018 in Nice, France.