Die aktuelle Orientierungshilfe in 5 Bänden - Vlaamse Vereniging ...

DGPPN Congress 2009 – English Programme
Welcome Address
DGPPN – German Association for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
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We will open the DGPPN Congress 2009 with music by the multi­award­winning Aachen
chamber choir Carmina Mundi, which is enjoying an ever­increasing following since its
formation in 1983. The choir has approximately 40 male and female singers. The ensemble
concentrates primarily on religious and secular a­cappella choir music ori ginating from a
variety of countries, cultures and eras. Concert tours and participation in international choral
festivals have taken Carmina Mundi to Argentina, Albania, Belgium, Estonia, France, the
Netherlands and Austria.
During his opening presentation, Dr. Thomas Elbert, Professor of Clinical Psychology and
Behavioural Neurology at the University of Constance, will address the question of how lifethreatening
experiences have changed the evolution of our minds and brains. Based on his
experiences in crisis areas of the world he will report on existential mental crises and the
possibilities of dealing with them. The common thread of the track which is particularly
important to me begins here and runs through the entire congress. Prof. Martin Bohus from
the Clinic for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psycho therapy at the Central Institute for Mental
Health in Mannheim will take up the thread again on Saturday in his plenary address:
Perspectives of Psychotherapy.
The topic of mental illnesses through the lifespan is not conceivable without including indepth
two of our subject’s neighbouring disciplines: child and adolescent psychiatry on one
hand and geriatric psychiatry on the other. Professor Judy Rapoport, Head of the Child Psychiatry
Department at the National Institute of Mental Health, will pick up the guiding theme
of this year’s congress directly in her plenary address and illustrate that we can only understand
mental illnesses in adults if we comprehend the precursors of these disturbances from
the outset of brain development.
The focus of the third day of the congress will be on the other end of the lifespan which is
increasingly gaining significance against the background of demographic change. We consider
the establishment of the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in
Bonn to be a positive signal for neuropsychiatric research in Germany that cannot be overestimated.
We aim to highlight this event by means of a “DZNE Day” on Friday with a variety
of presentations. We are particularly pleased to have been able to secure the founding
director of the DZNE, Prof. Pierluigi Nicotera, for a plenary lecture. Among other things, he
is scientifically engaged in the apoptosis, programmed cell death, which plays a key role in
neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s dementia. Alongside this there will be two
DZNE symposia which will deal with aspects of basic research and with psychosocial and
care questions relating to dementing illnesses.
I would like to personally recommend two presidents’ symposia to you. One will deal with
current developments in psychiatric and psychotherapeutic research: Which biological
developments will have the greatest effects and change our subject in future decades? In
the second symposium we will discuss ethics, and hence the image of humanity, as well as
the particular responsibility of our clinical and scientific action.
Also important to us this year is the first information day to be run for patients and family
members with presentations on the most important clinical symptoms of mental illness. The
DGPPN Academy and the Care Congress, the Student Congress, the Teachers’ Congress and
the Trialogue Forum are traditionally a part of the DGPPN congress and we are very proud
of this. An extensive range of topics await you again in these fields this year.