Cultural Psychiatry

Section committee

TARRICONE Ilaria , Chair

GRAEF-CALLIESS Iris Tatjana, Co-Chair

GAMBARO Eleonora, Secretary

Section mission

This Section's mission is to:

Promote the improvement of mental health services to immigrant and ethnic minority patients via the creation of a forum in which research, training, diagnosis, and treatment can be explored in a specifically European context.

Section objectives

To create a forum which brings together professionals and others with an interest in the field to explore and develop the field of cultural psychiatry in a European context
To promote, initiate, and carry out culturally competent research concerning the relationship between migration and mental health, ethnopsychopharmacology, psychotherapy, psychometrics, and other rela
To promote the broad notion of cultural competence, particularly in the context of pre-graduate, graduate, and continuing education
To stimulate recruitment into the field of cultural psychiatry and the cultural competence orientation
To contribute to the quality of psychiatric research and mental health treatment by the promotion of the cultural psychiatry into all facets of psychiatry and psychology in Europe
To forge alliances and partnerships with other sections and national and international associations dedicated to cultural psychiatry

Annual reports

Future Activities

conference

ACTIVITIES AT THE UPCOMING ECP IN MADRID

05 April 2025 - 08 April 2025 / Session room : Berlin

Description :

Mental Health Policy session

Addressing the need for specialised LGBTIQ+ psychiatric services and training from a transcultural perspective

06.04.2025 | 08:00 - 09:30 | Berlin

Description:

This session is organised by the Section on Cultural Psychiatry

This symposium addresses the transcultural aspects of specialized psychiatric services for LGBTIQ+ persons, including affirmative approaches to psychiatric care and psychotherapy in different European countries and the United States. A special focus will be placed on defining the implications for training psychiatrists, psychiatry residents, psychologists and other mental health professionals with the goal of increasing the capacity for adequately and appropriately providing effective care for this group, which has a higher risk of mental health disorders, substance disorders and suicide.

Chair: Ilaria Tarricone (Italy) , Dinesh Bhugra (United Kingdom)

Importance of intercultural paradigm in affirmative clinical practice with LGBTIQ+ people

Speaker: Iva Zegura (Croatia)

Intercultural psychotherapy addressing intersectionality

Speaker: Iris Tatjana GRAEF-CALLIESS (Germany)

LGBTIQ+ Specialty Care in USA: The Continuing Need for Specialty Clinics and Resources

Speaker: Amir Ahuja (United States)

LGBTQ+ transcultural psychiatry – the need for capacity building, specialized psychiatric services and recognizing the specific needs of LGBTIQ+ refugees in the Nordic countries

Speaker: Goran Mijaljica (Sweden)ù

Mental Health Policy Session

People on the move and mental health: Challenges and solutions

06.04.2025 | 17:00 - 18:30 | Madrid

Topic: Mental Health Policy

Description:

A growing body of literature identifies the drivers and barriers of migration as a variety of push and pull factors at the macro- (global and national), meso- (professional) and micro- (personal) levels. Interestingly, many of the key drivers of migration to Europe were also factors driving migration from Europe to other countries and are thus relevant for all high-income countries. A majority of people have been forced to flee their homes than ever before, with a staggering more than 117 million individuals displaced worldwide, according to a report released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Mental health problems that forcibly displaced people (IDPs, refugees and asylum seekers) experience constitute a serious public and mental health problem. There is increasing evidence that a large proportion of refugees and asylum seekers residing in different parts of the European countries suffer from the consequences of traumatic events and exhibit psychological problems or develop mental disorders including, but not limited to, trauma related disorders, e.g., Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Furthermore, people who have been forcibly displaced or who are stateless have been among the hardest-hit groups of during the Covid-19 Pandemic and Climate change is also driving displacement and increasing the vulnerability of those already forced to flee, facing increased food and economic insecurity as well as challenges to access health and protection services.
The European Psychiatric Association (EPA) has a Task Force on Migration and Mental Health to raise awareness on this important public health problem and outlines strategies for how its member societies and the mental health professionals at large may contribute to managing these challenges.
This Task Force on Migration and Mental Health aims to increase awareness, basic knowledge and skills of the psychiatrists and other mental health workers related to migrants, refugees and forcibly displaced people and mental health consequences of migration and displacement.
In this session we will focus on current conditions in different parts of Europe and discuss publications and recommendations of the Task Force.

Chair: Geert Dom (Belgium) , Meryam Schouler-Ocak (Germany)