IACAPAP President's Message Sep 2024

Dear colleagues and friends of IACAPAP, 

These have been quite months with the summer vacation in the Northern-Hemisphere. Thus, our column this time will be shorter.  

Regarding the next World Congress of the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions in Hamburg, Germany in July 2026, Professor Tobias Banaschewski already formed a local organizing committee that is helping him in the first steps of constructing the overall structure of the meeting. As mentioned before the theme of the Congress will be: “Facing challenges in a constantly changing world: Empowering child and adolescent mental health by evidence-based approaches.” 

We also just finished the first phase of our Challenge Grant. As you might remember, Professor Myron Belfer, the Honorary President of IACAPAP, pledged to match all donations collected for this grant up to 22,000 Euros that is our target. So far we have managed to reach 6,189 Euros in this campaign. Thus, we are launching a new campaign, titled 'Challenge Grant Phase II', which started on 6th of September, with a revised strategy to reach our target goal. The focus of this second stage will be to secure funding to support IACAPAP fellowship programs. It aims to provide essential travel grant support to selected fellows participating in the Donald J Cohen Fellowship Program (DJCFP) and the Helmut Remschmidt Research Seminar (HRRS) as well as operating funds to support the Early Career Group (ECG) development program. The DJCFP is a training program for young professionals, inaugurated at the 2004 IACAPAP World Congress in Berlin. Its aim is to foster the professional development of emerging leaders in child and adolescent mental health worldwide. 426 young CAMH professionals from 71 countries were already trained in this program. The HRRS Program was initiated in 2007, and this is a training program for young mental health professionals, but its specific focus is on enhancing expertise in research relevant to infants, children, adolescents and families mental health. 186 young CAMH professionals from 57 countries were already trained in this program. The Early Career Group (ECG) aims to provide a large network that would allow early career and trainee child and adolescent psychiatrists and allied professionals to network on a continuous basis, share ideas and experiences and build a foundation for stronger professional networks of international cooperation into the future. As you might imagine, these are very demanding initiatives needing a lot of voluntary work and substantial financial support to survive. Unfortunately, IACAPAP does not have sufficient budget to continue supporting these incredible programs in the future without help. Thus, we are certain that established CAMH professionals around the globe will be eager to secure the future of the next generation of young CAMH professionals. For more information, please visit the IACAPAP Challenge Grant site. 

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 Clinical Fellowship Program for Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs): Three fellows from Maputo, Mozambique have successfully completed the first 6-months of their training in Brazil at the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre. The SNF Global Center at the Child Mind Institute, in concert with the mentorship teams from Brazil and Mozambique, are preparing for the second phase of the program which will take place in Mozambique, supported by both remote and local supervision starting in spring of 2025. The selection process for the next cohort of Mozambican fellows from Nampula, who will begin their training in Brazil in February 2025, is already underway. Our former Donald Cohen Fellowship Coordinator, Dr. Ayesha Mian, together with IACAPAP and colleagues from the SNF Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, led by Mr. Peter Raucci, the Program Director of Fellowships, are spearheading efforts to establish another African hub, with South Africa proposed as the host country for clinical fellows from potential partner country, Tanzania. Additionally, initial discussions are underway to create an Asian hub, with a target launch date in 2026. 
• SNF Global Center Item Bank: The SNF Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health and IACAPAP continue their collaborative efforts to develop a comprehensive Item Bank, designed to assess a wide range of mental health conditions across age groups. The instrument will be culturally adapted for global use and made freely available to the international community. The development process is structured into four phases: expert review, translatability assessment, psychometric validation, and pretesting with individuals who have lived experiences. To date, the Item Bank has been reviewed by approximately 300 experts from all 14 UN regions, and its translatability has been assessed in 12 languages. We are now approaching 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 website.

Regarding our partnership with the World Federation of ADHD to form an international committee to prepare a new appeal to include methylphenidate in the WHO Essential Medicines List, the group lead by Professors Brooke Molina and Philip Shaw is moving fast with their application! This is an effort also involving an outstanding team of international, multidisciplinary mental health workers in child and adolescent mental health. The deadline for submission of their application is November 1st, and afterwards there will be opportunity for interested stakeholders to provide comments on the submission during a public consultation phase following publication on the WHO website. 

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 Lancet Psychiatry this month: (McGorry PD, et al. The Lancet Psychiatry Commission on youth mental health. Lancet Psychiatry. 2024 Sep;11(9):731-774. doi: 10.1016/S2215-0366(24)00163-9. PMID: 39147461). This extensive review addresses major challenges and opportunities in youth mental health, and it is structured in five sections: Part 1 – The changing landscape of youth mental health; Part 2 – Conceptual frameworks and trajectories; Part 3 – Models of care; Parts 4 and 5 – The economic and political imperative. Their work began in 2019 with a meeting among a very diverse group of professionals including clinical psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, epidemiology, social science, economics, and service reform, as well as young people from a range of low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries. The ambitious goal of the paper is to provide a blueprint to transform prevention and care for young people at risk of, or with, mental illness. The paper might be openly accessed if you register in the journal website and, for sure, it is worth reading for everyone working with youth mental health.

Finally, regarding the auditable goals proposed in the previous bulletin, they were again partially achieved since:  

1. The threshold for the IACAPAP Challenge Grant was not met. However, we are certain that with your help to foster training of a new generation of CAMH professionals, we will succeed in the second phase of the Grant.  
2. We are closing the final details to have Tanzania as the African partner country (the one who will send the fellows) to South Africa (hosting country) as part of the SNF Global Center Child and Adolescent Mental Health Clinical Fellowship Program.  
3. The cultural assessment of the SNF Global Center Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMH) Item Bank was finished.  

The auditable goals up to the next bulletin will be:  

1. Achieve the threshold of 22,000 Euros with the second phase of the IACAPAP Challenge Grant. We count on you to meet this goal! 
2. Have all the contracts in place between the African hosting country (South Africa) and the one who will send the fellows (Tanzania) as part of the SNF Global Center Child and Adolescent Mental Health Clinical Fellowship Program and the preliminary program of training for the fellows defined. 
3. Have the hosting country and the one which will send fellows from Asia defined.
4. Have the psychometric assessment of the SNF Global Center Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMH) Item Bank in progress. 
5. Have the new appeal to include methylphenidate in the WHO Essential Medicines List sent to WHO.  

I hope you all enjoy reading our Bulletin.  

IACAPAP Bulletin, Issue 75