IACAPAP President's Message Dec 2024

As was the case last year, I would like to begin our last presidential column of 2024 wishing all IACAPAP friends and their families a very happy and healthy 2025! Again, this was not an easy year with so many youths and families suffering the devasting impact of war and climate catastrophes in different parts of the world. My own state faced the worst climate disaster ever in Brazil in a flooding that left 600,000 people dislodged. Despite this global context, IACAPAP has several achievements to celebrate. Among others, we had a very successful IACAPAP World Congress in Rio where our delegates experienced a wonderful atmosphere and an excellent scientific program. Thanks to Professor Myron Belfer, we launched our first challenge grant that, although did not meet the expected threshold, gave us experience in this interesting funding mechanism and secured additional financial support for our association.  

I am also happy to announce that our Executive Committee has decided to appoint Professor Bruno Falissard, one of our past presidents, as IACAPAP honorary president based on his track of excellent work done for child and adolescent mental health and for our association. Thus, he will join our stellar gallery of honorary presidents currently composed of Professor Helmut Remschmidt and Professor Myron Belfer.   

Additionally, do not forget also to save the date for your next World Congress of the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions in Hamburg, Germany on July 1st to 4th, 2026. Next year will be the perfect time for registration and planning your trip. Professor Tobias Banaschewski and the local organising committee have already formed an international scientific advisory committee and they are working with CPO Hanser, our core PCO, on the infrastructure of the congress.   

As usual, I would also like to update you on the progress made these last three months in the collaboration between IACAPAP and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Child Mind Institute:    

• Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Child Mind Institute Clinical Fellowship Program for Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs): The three fellows from Maputo, Mozambique, are approaching the end of the first year of training in Brazil at the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre. This will be the end of their specialised training abroad. The SNF Global Center, in concert with the clinical mentorship teams from Brazil and Mozambique, will commence the second phase of the program which will take place in Mozambique organised and ready to start in March 2025. Fellows will receive additional training upon returning home and will prepare to work as a multi-disciplinary team working in the public sector. The selection process has been completed for the second cohort of Mozambican fellows from Nampula and they will begin their training in Brazil in February 2025. IACAPAP would like to congratulate our colleagues Anibal Anube, Florentino Escova, and Paulino Feliciano on their successful applications. Dr. Ayesha Mian, representing IACAPAP, and colleagues from the SNF Global Center, led by Mr. Peter Raucci, Program Director of Fellowships, are currently shortlisting the next country from Africa that will send the fellows to the selected host country, South Africa. 
• SNF Global Center Item Bank - an Assessment Tool to Support Culturally Appropriate Global Data Collection: The SNF Global Center and IACAPAP continue their collaborative efforts to develop a comprehensive Item Bank – a validated tool for data collection that is designed to assess a wide range of mental health conditions across age groups. The instrument will be culturally and linguistically adapted (initially in 20 languages) for global use and made freely available to the international community. We expect that this will be a great tool for epidemiological research globally and for clinical use worldwide. The development process is structured into four phases: expert review, translatability assessment, psychometric validation, and pretesting with individuals who have lived experiences. The year 2025 will mark the commencement of the psychometric evaluation phase, which will further refine the tool for global application. For more details on the process, you can visit the SNF Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health webpage on the Child Mind Institute website or reach out to Dr. Zeina Mneimneh, Program Director of Global Landscape Mapping / Epidemiology. 
   

I am also very happy to share with you that the committee formed in the context of the partnership between IACAPAP and the World Federation of ADHD to prepare a new appeal to include methylphenidate in the WHO Essential Medicines List, led by Professors Brooke Molina and Philip Shaw, completed the work and submitted the petition before the deadline of November 1st, 2024.  The WHO will announce the timeframe where interested stakeholders can provide comments on the submission during a public consultation. We are following this issue closely and we will announce on our website when this opportunity would be available. We strongly encourage all our national association members and individual members to enthusiastically support this appeal.   

As you might remember, our ante-penultimate paragraph is always dedicated to calling your attention to an impactful paper recently published on CAMH in scientific literature. In this column, I would like to highlight a paper published in JAMA Network Open last October: Jaycox LH, Murphy ER, Zehr JL, Pearson JL, Avenevoli S. Social Media and Suicide Risk in Youth. JAMA Netw Open. 2024 Oct 1;7(10):e2441499. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.41499. Why does this paper matter? There is a huge debate in the traditional media and the scientific community about the risk/benefit ratio of social media for youths. Australia’s parliament has just passed a world-first law banning social media for youths younger than 16 years of age. On one side, traditional media celebrates this initiative and New York Best-seller books like “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt claiming that social media is the responsible for an epidemic of mental disorders in youths. On the other, scientific journals like Nature and Science state that there is not much science in these claims (see https://internet.psych.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/532-Master/532-UnitPages/Unit-11/Odgers_Nature_2024.pdf and https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr1730. The paper by investigators of the NIMH published in JAMA Network Open is interesting in providing data on methodological challenges that need to be addressed to guide intervention strategies and future policy relevant to the use of social media for youth and one of the most important outcomes in mental health (i.e., suicide risk).  

Finally, regarding the auditable goals proposed in the previous bulletin, they were again partially achieved; the amount received from our IACAPAP Challenge Grant was significant but did not achieve our established goal (EUR 22K). Regarding the second pair of countries that will be part of the SNF Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Clinical Fellowship Program for LMICs, we faced some political issues in defining the country who will send the fellows, delaying the process a little bit. However, we continue having South Africa as the hosting country and the preliminary training program for the fellows is being finalised. We are yet to define the host country and the one which will send fellows from Asia. The psychometric assessment of the SNF Global Center Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMH) Item Bank is in quick progress. The new appeal to include methylphenidate in the WHO Essential Medicines List was sent to WHO. 

The auditable goals up to the next bulletin will be:  

1. Have all the contracts in place between the African hosting country (South Africa) and the one who will send the fellows as part of the SNF Global Center Child and Adolescent Mental Health Clinical Fellowship Program and a date defined for the launching of this program in the first semester of 2025. 
2. Have the hosting country and the one which will send fellows from Asia defined.    
3. Have the first of a series of trials/surveys for psychometric assessment of the SNF Global Center Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMH) Item Bank in the first quarter of 2025. 
    

I hope you all enjoy reading our Bulletin.  

IACAPAP Bulletin, Issue 76