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THE STRATEGY AND POLICIES OF THE WPA President, World Psychiatric Association
World Psychiatry – Volume 1 N° 3 – October 2002 |
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Full text / Texte entier /
النص الكامل
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The strength of the WPA policies largely depends on the continuity
and consistency of its leadership. The WPA Executive Committee in each period
has its impact and imprinting on the development and pro- motion of the
activities of the Association. Moreover, the statutes and by-laws allow the
past leadership to continue giving their advice to the present leadership. A major basis for
the WPA 2002-2005 Strategic and Financial Plan has been the General Survey
that the Association carried out in 2001 among its Member Societies. It has
been very stimulating to find a widespread perception that the Association
has made significant advances in the attainment of its objectives since the
preceding General Survey three years before. Also important has been the
evaluation of the 1999-2002 Strategic and Financial Plan, submitted to the
General Assembly in Yokohama. The Strategic Plan
for 2002-2005 shall commit not only the Executive Committee, which is the
governing body of WPA between General Assemblies, but all other components of
the WPA and its Member Societies. The broad goals of
the WPA during the next three years can be listed as follows: 1. To optimize the fulfilment of the purposes of the Association, as
specified in the statutes and by- laws. 2. To strengthen all Member Societies in their respective countries
and support those in developing countries and regions, in collaboration with
more developed Member Societies, through practice guidelines, training
opportunities, and research collaboration, and the sharing of organizational
experience. 3. To strengthen the WPA operational structure in terms of
systematization, transparence, and participatory governance, including work
towards the development of a Permanent Secretariat. 4. To promote ethics-related activities. 5. To promote the quality of care and prevention of mental disorders
and the well-being of psychiatric patients. 6. To promote the professional development of young psychiatrists with
their direct involvement in expanding Fellowship programs, training and
research opportunities and interactional networks. 7. To improve the
professional organization, scientific and educational quality, and systematic
evaluation of WPA-organized meetings as well as their balanced geographic
distribution. 8. To upgrade the editorial and publishing capacity of WPA to serve
the needs of the Member Societies and of the international profession at
large. 9. To improve international psychiatric education and training and to
explore a greater role for WPA in coordinating and conducting international
collaborative research. 10. To advance partnerships with other organizations on broad
objectives such as educational and practice standards, epidemiological
surveys, anti-stigma programs, public health promotion, and dealing with the
impact of globalization on mental health. A brief
outline of specific goals to be fulfilled and presented to the General
Assembly in the year 2005 will be attempted here, taking into consideration
each component of the WPA. §
Secretariat The success of the
activities of the WPA Secretariat clearly emerges from the results of the
2001 General Survey. We shall continue to evaluate and improve the
functioning of the Secretariat. The current institutional practice has been
to move the Secretariat every six years when a new Secretary General was
elected, taking advantage of the home institutional resources available to
such officer. However, this practice has been associated with considerable
operational delays, loss of trained personnel, need to reapply for legal and
tax-free status recognition, communication and mailing confusion, and an
image of institutional fragility. This has led to the view that to attain
institutional stability and maturity as well as to enhance its capacity and
coordination on education, meetings, research and publications, WPA must
start planning for a Permanent Secretariat. In line with this, the recent
consultation with the WPA components showed that a large majority (82%) of
the responders regarded the development of a Permanent Secretariat as very or
quite important. The general Assembly in Yokohama gave the mandate to the
Executive Committee for the implementation of the Permanent Secretariat
starting from 2005. §
Zonal structure The Zonal
Representatives will have a wide involvement in the policy and evaluation of
WPA activities. Efforts to consolidate the zonal structure and intensify the
continuous interaction between the Executive Committee, Zonal Representatives
and Member Societies should be stimulated, especially at the regional or continental
level. §
Educational activities
The WPA 2002-2005 policy is to further expand the implementation,
coordination and evaluation of WPA educational activities (e.g., through the
Education Center); to further develop, implement and evaluate already
existing WPA educational programs; to further develop a continuing medical
education (CME) accreditation system; to develop new educational programs.
This can be achieved by maintaining effective communication with the WPA
components and Educational Liaison Network about their educational needs,
producing CD-ROM versions of all WPA educational programs, and encouraging
WPA components, especially the Sections, to develop new educational programs.
It is vital to evaluate and upgrade medical student training in psychiatry,
to extend and optimize psychiatric training, to regularize and enhance the
system of provision of CME credits for WPA meetings and to continue updating
and upgrading WPA Online. §
Sections activities
The WPA Sections
are the scientific arm of the Association. We should further strengthen these
Sections and consolidate cross-sectional collaboration, establish Sections on
pertinent topics not already covered at the moment and ensure the general
functioning and visibility of the Sections. §
Meetings
The last
three years have shown expansion of the scientific meetings of WPA. We should
continue to organize World Congresses, International and Regional Congresses
and Meetings, and Thematic Conferences on matters relevant to WPA purposes,
to improve the quality of WPA meetings and to ensure the balanced
distribution (geographically and calendar wise) of WPA Regional Meetings and
Congresses, including both developed and developing countries. §
Publications
There is an evolutionary
revolution in the WPA publications. We should continue the present policy of
publication, and expand the distribution and visibility of the official
journal of the Association, World Psychiatry. The journal is published
in three issues per year and sent free of charge to 20,000 psychiatrists of
114 different countries. These include all the officers of WPA, its member
Societies and its Sections, and all the psychiatrists whose names and
addresses have been provided by Member Societies and Sections. World
Psychiatry includes special articles on recent clinical, service or
research developments of special interest to psychiatrists worldwide; forums
on controversial issues of clinical relevance; high-quality research reports;
mental health policy papers; reports on WPA institutional programs; reports
by WPA Sections and Member Societies; and news about the various initiatives
of the Association. The first four
volumes of the series "Evidence and Experience in Psychiatry", dealing
respectively with depressive disorders, schizophrenia, dementia and
obsessive-compulsive disorder, have been the second most important source of
income for the WPA in the years 2000 and 2001, and have now sold out. A
second updated edition of these volumes, in paperback form, will be on the
market by the end of the year 2002. An Italian version of the four volumes
has been already published. A Russian version of the volume on schizophrenia
is in preparation. Negotiations are ongoing for the production of a Spanish
edition of the four volumes. An electronic version of the volumes is also in
preparation. The fifth volume of the series, dealing with bipolar
disorder, bas been published in May 2002: it contains 104 contributions by
all the most renowned experts in the field, and will be available also in
electronic form. The sixth volume of the series, dealing with eating
disorders, is in preparation and will be available at the beginning of the
year 2003 a Russian and a Lithuanian version of this volume have been already
planned. The preparation of the seventh volume of the series, dealing with
phobias, has started in June 2002. This series of books does not involve any
financial burden on the WPA. A contract has been signed with Wiley, providing
that the WPA receive 10% of the revenues from sales of the books and 50% of
the revenues from sales of the electronic package and from the transfer of
rights for translation. The series Images of
Psychiatry aims to provide a picture of the past and the present of
psychiatry in individual countries or groups of countries, covering such
issues as mental health care, psychiatric education, psychiatric research,
epidemiology of psychiatric disorders, child and adolescent psychiatry and
geriatric psychiatry. Volumes
on Japan, Arab countries and Poland have been already published. Volumes on
German-speaking countries, Latin America, Spain, and Greece are in
preparation. §
Consensus and position statements The policy is to
monitor the advance of consensus statements under preparation, including new
specific ethics guidelines (e.g. the rights of psychiatrists, ethics of
treating subsyndromal disorders). Four new specific guidelines have been
endorsed by the General Assembly in Yokohama: ethics of psychotherapy in
medicine, conflict of interests in relationships with industry, conflict
arising with third party payers, violating the boundaries between
psychiatrists and patients). It is our strategy to encourage new proposals
for consensus/position statements, especially by WPA Sections, in
collaboration with other non-governmental and intergovernmental agencies. §
Financial aspects Efforts should be
directed to consolidate the assets of the Association, to continue to improve
communication with Member Societies on financial matters and to explore
alternative ways of fundraising. Following the recommendations of the
secretary for Finances to the Executive Committee, the WPA components will
attempt to fulfill the following to improve and secure the finances,
of the WPA: a)
set 10%
aside of all income in order to create an asset base for the organization; b)
establish
a Permanent Secretariat to ensure administrative continuity; c)
appoint
a core professional congress organizer (PCO) to streamline and optimize
surplus from congresses and meetings; d)
look for
other sources of income in addition to membership dues and congresses; e)
expand
the area of publications as source of income; f)
finalize
congress accounts no more than 6 months after closing the congress; g)
continue
to work for financial transparence for all components of the Association; h)
increase
the 13% overhead for functional services to 15% for new contracts; i)
slowly increase membership dues by 10% annually
for three years; j)
ensure continuity in financial matters by having
slowly staggered terms of the members of the Committee on Finances; k)
in
collaboration with the International Pharmaceutical Congress Advisory
Association (IPCAA), consolidate and expand the Corporate Supporter program; l)
exhibit great caution in launching activities
that may require long-term financing. §
Ethical standards and activities
After all Member Societies have endorsed the Madrid Declaration, we
should direct our efforts to work for the visibility and implementation of
ethical standards governing the psychiatric profession, for the protection of
the rights of the mentally ill and for the provision of adequate services to
the mentally ill. §
Institutional programs Our goals in the
next three years are: a)
to
organize, evaluate, and adjust Institutional Programs on issues and tasks of
broad and inter-sectorial scope; b)
to establish
task forces on issues considered of urgency and needing a time limited
intensive intervention c)
to
evaluate and adjust the Institutional Program on Stigma; d)
to
evaluate and adjust the lnstitutional Program to Promote the Professional
Development of Young Psychiatrists e)
to
continue and adjust Institutional Programs on critical developing areas such
as Sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia, and to establish and evaluate
programs regarding South Asia, Central America, Eastern Europe and the
Balkans f)
to implement,
evaluate and upgrade the Core Curriculum for the training of psychiatrists,
and monitor its implementation g)
to promote accessibility to and equity of
psychiatric services across the world. |
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So as to publish all pages in 3 languages Please participate in the
translation of this article in French and Arabic and send it to the Arabic edition or the French
edition |
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Document Code OP.0006 |
ترميز المستند OP.0006 |
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