25TH ANNUAL ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRY SYMPOSIUM IN TURKEY

By: Füsun Çetin Çuhadaroğlu, M.D., Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Hacettepe Univ. School of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey, Councilor, IACAPAP

We have been organizing this symposium for a quarter of a century. The annual Adolescent Symposia were started by the Turkish Association for CAP after the establishment of the Adolescent Committee within the Association in 1995, and the first symposium was organized in İstanbul in 1996. These annual meetings are organized to increase the awareness and knowledge of psychiatrists, psychologists and allied professionals about the mental health needs of adolescents and developmental issues, psychological problems and psychiatric disorders during this phase of life.

Due to the pandemic, the symposium was conducted online on the 7th of November , 2020, and the celebration of our 25th organization of this meeting was celebrated on Zoom with a small group of organizers gathering to cut a cake.

This year, the theme of the Adolescent Symposium was ‘Adolescents between Life and Death’. An opening lecture with the title of the theme by F. Çuhadaroğlu was followed by a session of oral presentations where three researches evaluating the effects of covid infection and the pandemic conditions on adolescents were presented: one in an outpatient clinic by A. Arman et al, the other in an inpatient setting by E.Tasgın et al, and the third was among a group with eating disorders by K. Nalbant et al.

The regular three-day program was shortened this year for our first-time virtual symposium. There were about 250 attendees and we all had a good experience of a virtual meeting with lively discussions and sharing of experiences regarding the effects of the pandemic.

IACAPAP Bulletin, Issue 60