“Psychiatry & Conflict”
The CPsychI Winter Conference 2019 was held in collaboration with the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Northern Ireland in Belfast.
Themed ‘Psychiatry & Conflict’, the two-day programme featured a number of internationally renowned speakers (domestic and international) and several parallel sessions. This year’s Winter Conference was an opportunity to further cement relationships with our colleagues from the North, and to explore issues around conflict in its many forms.
The conference was opened on Thursday morning by College President, Dr John Hillery and Dr Gerry Lynch, Chair and Vice President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Northern Ireland.
The first session, titled New Vistas on Trauma featured talks by Professor Chris Brewin, Dr Michael Duffy and Ms Geraldine Hamilton who discussed the diagnosis of complex PTSD, understanding and treating complex grief and the Northern Ireland Regional Trauma Network, respectively.
Trainee presentations included talks by Dr Genevieve Crudden, Ms Niamh Dhondt, Dr Benjamin O’Keeffe, Dr Kapil Sharma, Mr Bryan Tanner and Dr Mary Wall on topics such as physician burnout, childhood adversity and persistent psychotic experiences, Irish home-based psychiatric treatment services, emergency psychiatric assessments of Irish travellers experiencing suicidal ideation and self-harm and chronic pain patients.
The parallel sessions at this year’s Winter Conference provided many interesting topics including the Transitioning from CAMHS to AMHS, Training Across Ireland, Personality Disorders, Hands On, Mixed Methods Research with Public Patient Involvement and PCS Workshop: Brake at the border?
Thursday evening included an awards ceremony and Northern Ireland members ceremony, followed by a drinks reception and the conference dinner.
Friday morning opened with a talk by Dr Mayura Deshpande titled Deradicalisation and the Psychiatrist: What is our lane?which illustrated the ethical dilemmas for psychiatrists inherent in the Prevent Agenda. This was followed by a presentation by Dr Cathy Stannard titled Crisis? What Crisis? Global Opioid Conversations, which covered the North American opioid epidemic and concerns of a similar epidemic unfolding in Europe, prompting initiatives to mitigate such a disaster. The talk covered data on prescription misuse and contrasts between American and European culture and healthcare that may be protective against our own opioid epidemic.
Following an introduction by Professor Wendy Burn, keynote speaker Lord Alderdice gave the RCPsych President’s Lecture, titled Conflict, co-operation and complexity.
View Lord Alderdice’s keynote speech from the conference.
A session on crisis intervention followed lunch, which included talks by Dr Philip McGarry and Dr Anne Jeffers and Professor Vincent Russell.
Film director Terry McMahon held an afternoon session provocatively titled Are the Central Tenets of Psychiatry Unashamedly Stolen from the Cathartic Constructs of Theatre?
The conference closed with a presentation by Dr Daisy Fancourt, titled Harnessing Creativity in Health Frontiers in Social Prescribing Research and Practice.
