Future Changes ofGlobal Mental Health
Dear Colleagues,
There are challenges and opportunities for the psychiatric profession to sustain and develop itself to secure the best possible future for the millions of people worldwide who will face life with mental illness.
The patient population of the future will reflect general demographic shifts towards older, more urban, and migrant populations. Services of the future should consider stepped care, increased use of multidisciplinary teamwork, more of a public health approach, and the integration of mental and physical health care. Psychiatrists need to remain up to date and educated in the evolving digital world.
OMICS is derived from the Sanskrit OM, which means “completeness and fullness”. Thus, a holistic, systems-oriented approach, which may be well-positioned to fill the gap between the need for rigorous and rational psychiatry and the need for personalized medicine. OMICS sciences, being based on high-throughput technologies, are systems biology related fields (like genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics and so on). In the frame of the P5 medicine, personalized, participatory, predictive, preventive ,psycho-cognitive , they could establish links between psychiatric disorder, which are disorders with a final common symptomatology with vastly heterogeneous biological, environmental and sociological underpinnings.
Personalized medicine P5 might be able to determine which patient will experience a severe side-effects from a specific medication. Nanotechnology might also contribute to more effective treatments. The role of inflammatory processes in mental disorders is under investigation and holds great promise. Advances in stem-cell therapy have enabled pluripotent cells to be directed towards defective brain areas with the aim of improving neuronal circuitry.
Psychiatrists also need to be trained in diagnosis and management of common communicable and non-communicable diseases so that they are equipped to manage common medical problems in patients with mental illness under their care.
Welcome to Abu Dhabi International Mental Health Conference 2018.
Prof. Ahmed Okasha
Conference Guest of Honor
Director of WHO Collaborating Center
For Research and Training in Mental Health
Professor and Founder of Institute of Psychiatry, Ain Shams University
President of World Psychiatric Association WPA (2002-2005)
Hon. President Egyptian Psychiatric Association
Hon. President Arab Federation of Psychiatrists
Adviser to the Egyptian President for Mental Health and Community integration
