IACAPAP President's Message Jun 2025

I am very happy to share with you some exciting progress achieved during these last three months since our previous Bulletin was published.  

In partnership with the International Society for Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology (ISAPP), the World Association for Infant Mental Health (WAIMH), and the World Psychiatric Association - Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Section (WPA-CAP), we had our World Infant, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Day (WICAMHD) on April 29th, 2025. The meeting was chaired by our IACAPAP past president, Daniel Fung.  The theme was Bridging Worlds: Mental Health Support for Displaced Children and Families. We adopted for the first time a hybrid format. The in-person part of the event took place in a session at the Turkish Association of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (TACAP) annual national conference. We had a line-up with several experts from diverse institutions addressing this very important topic. As usual, we received very positive feedback about this initiative (see more details in this issue of the Bulletin). 

The preparation of our next World Congress of the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions in Hamburg, Germany from July 1st to 4th, 2026 continues at full speed. The International Scientific Committee is formed, our CPO Hanser defined the layout of the rooms in the Congress Venue, and the Congress website will be open for symposia submissions in early July. There is no better time to prepare your proposals for symposia at the congress.     

Regarding the two areas of collaboration between IACAPAP and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Child Mind Institute:    

• SNF Global Center Clinical Fellowship Program for Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs):  Our first cohort of Mozambican fellows are completing their second-year training in Mozambique with local mentors and remote supervision from both Mozambique and Brazil. The second cohort of clinical fellows is already settled in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and are in the process of completing their first-year training at Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre. The program is moving smoothly and is proving to be a rewarding fellowship year. Peter Raucci, Program Director of Fellowships at the SNF Global Center, and Ayesha Mian, representing IACAPAP, visited Kenya in May for meetings with key leaders of mental health services in Kenya to explore a potential pairing to send clinical fellows for training in South Africa. As the team explores these possibilities, the SNF Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Child Mind Institute and IACAPAP recently launched an open call for institutions interested in hosting this program to share contact information with the SNF Global Center. The goal of this program is to make the selection of pairs of countries for the next rounds of the Clinical Fellowship Program for LMICs even more comprehensive and participatory!
• SNF Global Center Item Bank: An Assessment Tool to Support Culturally Appropriate Global Data Collection: As announced in the previous bulletin, the psychometric evaluation phase for the item bank being developed by the SNF Global Center is in progress. We are actively collecting data on the instrument using the assessment tool in more than 5,000 web-based interviews across 11 countries as the initial step of psychometric validation evaluation and item reduction. At this time, youth with lived experience will also provide feedback on the tool. An effort to provide an engaging name, branding, and visual identity for the tool is underway, and we expect to make this process even more participatory, with more information to be shared soon. In the meantime, we encourage you to read more about this work on the SNF Global Center’s newly revamped website here.

We are very grateful for the expressive number of national associations that endorsed the appeal document to include methylphenidate in the WHO Essential Medicines List, led by Professors Brooke Molina and Philip Shaw. You can find the support letters (and few letters against), the application file (A.19 Methylphenidate – attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), three expert reviewers (two positives and one negative) and the comments from the WHO Division of Mental Health, Brain Health and Substance Use  here. Now, the decision is in the hands of the WHO-EML committee. The final decision is expected in July.  

Another interesting development in these three months is the beginning of an effort by IACAPAP in conjunction with the World Psychiatric Association - Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Section (WPA-CAP) and other stakeholders to construct an International Essential Curriculum for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Training portraying what is considered fundamental in a training program in the area. This effort is also led by Ayesha Mian from the IACAPAP side. 

At the end of June, we will have our IACAPAP executive committee meeting where we will discuss for one day what is being done, future directions and goals. We would love to receive your suggestions on what else should be pursued in our Association. Please send your suggestions to Sue Wong at info@iacapap.org. 

Our ante-penultimate paragraph is always dedicated to calling your attention to an impactful paper recently published on CAMH in scientific literature. This time, I would like to highlight one paper just published in the June issue of the World Psychiatry (Vancampfort D et al. The efficacy, mechanisms and implementation of physical activity as an adjunctive treatment in mental disorders: a meta-review of outcomes, neurobiology and key determinants. World Psychiatry. 2025 Jun;24(2):227-239. doi: 10.1002/wps.21314). As you probably know, the World Psychiatry has the highest impact factor journal in mental health, and it is open access. The systematic search identified 13 meta-analyses of high methodological quality assessing outcomes of physical activity as an adjunctive treatment for mental disorders, which included 256 randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and 12,233 individuals. Authors presented the results highlighting where there is evidence of large effect sizes. Two of the three outcomes with large effect sizes were conditions in children and adolescents: improvement of attention in children and adolescents with ADHD and reducing depressive symptoms in children, adolescents and adults with depressive disorders; and reducing body mass index in adults with schizophrenia. Thus, we, as CAMH professionals, need to not forget to strongly recommend physical exercise as part of the portfolio for interventions for youths with these two disorders.         
     
Finally, regarding the auditable proposed goals in the previous bulletin, they were partially achieved since:   

1. We are beginning to draft a MOU between South Africa, Kenya, CMI and IACAPAP as part of the SNF Global Center Clinical Fellowship Program for Low- and Middle-Income Countries, expecting to launch this program in the first trimester of 2026.  
2. Instead of having a third pair of countries solely decided by IACAPAP and CMI, we launched a call to make the process more participatory. Thus, the expectation now moved to have this definition up to the end of 2025.      
3. The first of a series of trials/surveys for psychometric assessment of the SNF Global Center Item Bank is underway. 
    

Our auditable goals up to the next bulletin are: 

1. Have the web page for symposia submission for the World Congress of the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions in Hamburg receiving submissions starting July, 2025. 
2. Held the Helmut Remschmidt Research Seminar from 7-12 September 2025, in the Monastery of Kloster Irsee, in Bavaria. 
3. Have the documents in place for beginning the program in South Africa for the Kenyan fellows and a date set for launching the program in the first trimester of 2026.  
4. Have a final list of 2-3 pair of countries to assess formal and logistic conditions to select one of them to be the third pair of countries of the SNF Global Center Clinical Fellowship Program for Low- and Middle-Income Countries. 
5. Keep moving the progress for the psychometric assessment of the SNF Global Center item bank and have the process to select naming and visual identity of the instrument in place.    
    

I hope you all enjoy reading our Bulletin.  

IACAPAP Bulletin, Issue 78