Professor Helen Herrman AO

Helen Herrman is President of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA). She is also Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre in Mental Health, Melbourne and past president of the International Association of Women’s Mental Health. She has received the award of Officer of the Order of Australia, and the honorary degree of Doctor of Medical Science from The University of Melbourne.

She is Professor of Psychiatry at Orygen, and the Centre for Youth Mental Health at The University of Melbourne, Australia. She is a practitioner fellow of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, and a member of The Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development. She chairs a new Lancet-WPA Commission on depression.

In the past, as Professor and Director of Psychiatry in St. Vincent’s Health Melbourne she led the development of an integrated area mental health service under Australia’s national reform of mental health care. For one year she acted as regional adviser in mental health for the WHO’s Western Pacific Region, based in Manila. Her research and practice interests include community mental health care and promoting mental health. She has past and present research programs in the mental health of marginalised groups, including homeless people, prisoners, and young women and men living in out-of-home care.  She is now leading the WPA’s action plan that is concerned with supporting the contribution of psychiatrists to global mental health.

Norman Sartorius, M.D., M.A., D.P.M., Ph.D., FRC. Psych.

Affiliation:

President, Association for the Improvement of Mental Health Programmes

14 chemin Colladon, 1209 Geneva, Switzerland

Tel: +41 22 7882331, Fax: +41 22 788 2334

sartorius@normansartorius.com       

 

Dr Sartorius served as Director of the Division of Mental Health of the World Health Organization (WHO) and was the principal investigator of several major international studies on schizophrenia, on depression and on health service delivery.  He has published more than 330 articles in scientific journals, authored or co-authored several books and edited a number of others.

He was the President of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) and President of the Association of European Psychiatrists (AEP).  Currently he is the President of the Association for the Improvement of Mental Health Programmes and holds professorial appointments at the Universities of London, Prague and Zagreb and at several other universities in the USA and China.

Professor Sartorius is a corresponding member of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Spanish Royal Academy of Medicine, member of the Medical Academies of Croatia, Peru and Mexico.  He has honorary doctorates from the Universities of Umea, Prague and Bath and is an Honorary Fellow or honorary member of numerous psychiatric associations.  He is also the editor of three journals and a member of the editorial board of many more.

Research Interests:  Psychiatric epidemiology, cross cultural psychiatry, public health issues, ethics and service organization.

Prof. Evgeny Krupitsky, MD, PhD

Prof. Evgeny Krupitsky, MD, PhD, is a Vice Director for Research and a Chief of the Department of Addictions at V.M. Bekhterev National Medical Research Center of Psychiatry and Neurology in St.-Petersburg, and a Chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Psychopharmacology of Addictions at St. Petersburg State Pavlov Medical University, Russia. Since 2006 he also holds a position of Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania. Major focus of his research is pharmacotherapy of drug and alcohol dependence. Dr. Krupitsky received several national and international awards including European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Fellowship Award (1997), Heffter Research Institute Award for Outstanding Research in Hallucinogens (2000), National Institute Drug Abuse of National Institute of Health (USA) Award for Excellence in International Leadership (2010), and Galen Prize (Russia) (2016).

Silvana Galderisi, Prof., MD, PhD

Silvana Galderisi, MD, PhD, is full professor of Psychiatry, Chair of the Department of Mental and Physical Health and Preventive Medicine of the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli. She is the Director of the Emergency Unit of the Department of Mental Health of the same University; 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 Past President of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA), Chairperson of the EPA Schizophrenia Section, of the European College of NeuroPsychopharmacology (ECNP) Schizophrenia Network, of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) Neuroimaging Section, and Co-chair of the Taskforce “Minimising coercion in mental health care” of the same Association. She is founding member and member of the Board of Directors of the European Group for Research in Schizophrenia; board member of the Schizophrenia International Research Society (SIRS) and Chairperson of the Publication Committee of the same Association; board member of the European Scientific Association on Schizophrenia (ESAS), and of the Italian Society for Psychopathology and Italian Society of Biological Psychiatry.  She is Honorary Member of the World Psychiatric Association-WPA and of the Hungarian Psychiatric Association (HPA), International Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association-APA, International Advisor of the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology (JSPN), and Honorary Fellow of the European Society of Social Psychiatry (ESSP).

Her research activity focuses on Schizophrenia pathophysiology, treatment and outcome, with particular reference to the domains of negative symptoms and cognition and their impact on psychosocial outcome. She is author/coauthor of more than 250 publications, in national and international journals and books, member of the Editorial Boards of several international psychiatric journals, Editor in Chief of Schizophrenia Bulletin Open.

Danuta Wasserman (DW) is a Univ. Prof. Dr. Med. in Psychiatry and Suicidology

Danuta Wasserman (DW) is a Univ. Prof. Dr. Med. in Psychiatry and Suicidology at Karolinska Institutet (KI), and the current Director and Founding Head of the National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention of Mental Ill-Health (NASP) at KI, since 1993. DW is appointed as the Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research, Methods Development and Training in Suicide Prevention since 1997 until July 2020 and assists in the development of suicide preventive research and suicide preventive programs on five continents. She is the former President (2013, 2014) of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) and the International Academy of Suicide Research (IASR). She is serving on the Board of the EPA since 2008 and Chairs presently the Committee on Ethics. Until 2013, she served for several years as the Chair of the Suicidology Sections at the EPA and World Psychiatric Association (WPA). Presently, she is the chair of the Suicide Research Network at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP). Professor Wasserman is the Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK, Honorary Member of the Hungarian Psychiatric Association and Honorary President of Estonian-Swedish Mental Health Institutet. DW has won numerous national and international honours and awards, including the Public Health Prize from the Nordic Council of Ministers of Health for the outstanding contribution to public mental health research and prevention, the Distinguished Research Award from the American Foundation for Suicide Research (AFSP), the Hans Rost Prize from the German Association for Suicide Prevention for the outstanding contribution to suicide research and prevention, the Stengel Research Award for outstanding contributions in the field of suicide research and prevention from the International Association for Suicide Prevention and Crisis Intervention (IASP), and from the British Medical Association (BMC) Board of Science Award for the Public Understanding of Science for her book Depression: the facts published by Oxford University Press. DW is the author of numerous scientific articles, reports and book chapters. She is the editor of the Oxford Textbook of Suicidology and Suicide Prevention: A Global Perspective, published by Oxford University Press in 2009 which is presentently updated for a new edition 2020. Her comprehensive book for busy clinicians and the broad audience interested in suicide prevention “Suicide an unnecessary death” published by Martin Dunitz (2001), has been translated into Chinese, Japanese and Russian and updated for a new edition by the Oxford University Press (2016).
 
DW’s research activities comprise epidemiological, psychodynamic and genetic studies of suicidal behaviours. In 2009, she received the honour from the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, to organize the “Nobel Conference on the role of genetics in promoting suicide prevention and the mental health of the population.” Summary of the whole conference was published in a special issue of European Psychiatry, 2010;25(5):249-310. She was responsible for organizing several national and international conferences in psychiatry and suicidology. DW is the Principle Investigator for two large-scale European randomized controlled trials (RCT), “Saving and Empowering Young Lives in Europe (SEYLE)” and “Working in Europe to Stop Truancy Among Youth (WE-STAY),” assessing the effectiveness of different intervention approaches and prevention strategies for adolescents. Both RCTs are funded with €3 million each by the European Union (EU). DW leads also a large RCT in Sweden 2016 – 2020 involving 163 schools, with the aim to test the effectiveness of the mental health promoting, Youth Aware of Mental Health (YAM) program in comparison to a control group. DW is the Swedish site-coordinator of the NEVERMIND project (NEurobehavioral predictiVE and peRsonalized Modeling of depressIve symptoms duriNg primary somatic Disorders through ICT-enabled, self-management procedures) and POTION (Promoting social interaction through emotional body odours), both funded by the EU in the Horizon 2020 framework program during 2017 - 2023.  Since 2000, she serves as the Principle Investigator for the Genetic Investigation of Suicide and Attempted Suicide Project (GISS project), funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Research Foundation in Sweden. DW serves as a consultant to the mental health promotion and suicide preventive studies among youth to several universities in Europe, Latin America, and to Montana State University, Texas University and Columbia University in the United States.  
 
Professor Wasserman is also the chair and a member of several national and international working groups on mental health promotion and suicide prevention.

Christina Hoven, Professor of Epidemiology and Psychiatry

Professor Christina Hoven is a Child Psychiatric Epidemiologist at Columbia University-New York State Psychiatric Institute, where she is a Professor of Epidemiology and Psychiatry, College of Physician and Surgeons and Mailman School of Public Health and is a Research Scientist, Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene. As Director of the Global Psychiatric Epidemiology Group (GPEG), a multidisciplinary, child-oriented research team, Professor Hoven’s research takes a life-course perspective, focusing on risk for and persistence of psychopathology, including school-based needs assessment and longitudinal sequelae of exposure to violence and disaster. Another major focus of her research is suicide, conducting community assessments, suicidal autopsy and school-based intervention studies. Her research primarily involves large-scale longitudinal, epidemiological investigations with communities of special interest, such as minorities, criminal justice involved families, 9/11 exposed individuals, immigrants and those exposed to disaster, such as war and natural disaster. Dr. Hoven carries out research throughout the world, having worked in more than 30 countries.

Professor Vera Morgan

Professor Vera Morgan is Head of the Neuropsychiatric Epidemiology Research Unit in the University of Western Australia (UWA) School of Population and Global Health, Director of the Centre for Clinical Research in Neuropsychiatry in the UWA Division of Psychiatry, and Operational Epidemiologist at the North Metropolitan Health Service Mental Health.

She is a psychiatric epidemiologist with a special interest in studying schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders utilising cohort-based record-linkage designs and clinical/survey data collections. Her cross-disciplinary epidemiological approach to the study of psychotic illness melds psychiatric, genetic, physical health, sociological and criminological perspectives on aetiology and course to help unravel the complex nature of these disorders and improve outcomes for affected people. Her current program of research focuses on environmental and genetic contributions to the risk of schizophrenia, as well as physical health comorbidity, including metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease, in people with psychotic illness.

She has a very strong national presence and international profile as a psychiatric epidemiologist. She was National Project Director and Convenor of the Technical Advisory Group for the Australian Government 2nd National psychosis survey (Survey of High Impact Psychosis—SHIP). Her professional roles have included: President, Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research; Vice-President, Australasian Epidemiological Association; Chair of the Research Committee of the Mental Health Council of Australia; and Member, The University of Western Australia Senate.