Psych Congress 2013: Science and the Clinic Come Together

By Charles Raison, MD

With the whir of the 2013 U.S. Psychiatric and Mental Health Congress behind us, it is a good moment to reflect on what—in my opinion—made this the best Congress in recent memory.

I think this year’s success can be traced to two primary factors, one specific to the Congress itself and the other to related to developments over the last 12 months in the larger world of mental health research and practice.

This year’s Congress took off with a blast thanks to a remarkably varied day of preconference activities. In the morning of preconference, attendees were treated to a magnum opus review of what clinicians need to know to maximally utilize the new DSM-5 in their practices. This high-level review was presented by none other than Dr. Michael First himself, editor of DSM-IV-TR and the Structured Clinical Interview for the DSMs (SCID).

Following Dr. First in the morning was a new edition of “Treating the Whole Patient,” (TWP) attended by over 600 people. In previous years TWP had been presented during the regular Congress, forcing attendees to choose between the more cutting-edge perspectives offered on topics in TWP vs. much-needed pragmatic offerings more directly related to direct patient care.

Liberating TWP to its own special spot in preconference was an act of magic and allowed us as a community to participate in an ongoing attempt to integrate the most recent scientific understandings of mental disorders into clinical practice. The preconference day was capped off by a dinner and a remarkably moving presentation by Eric Arauz, a widely sought-after speaker who did a powerful job of capturing the pain of serious mental illness.

Although not all attendees may have recognized why, many people said the conference felt more manageable and relaxed this year. I think this may have been the result of reducing the number of concurrently running lectures from 5 to 3. This strategy had the happy effects of reducing participant frustration over making hard choices and allowed us to winnow the list of speakers down to those really worth listening to.

As a result of this, we heard repeatedly that the caliber of the presentations was uniformly high, and often exceptional, this year. Not only was the caliber of presentations high, but many talks were given by internationally recognized leaders in mental health, such as Dilip Jeste, MD, past president of the American Psychiatric Association.

As clinicians, educators, and researchers, the Congress Steering Committee has a strong commitment to fostering the professional development of colleagues at the early stages of their careers. In keeping with this, for the first time this year, we offered awards for the best scientific posters submitted by emerging clinicians and invited the top two awardees to present their work on the first morning of the conference, directly after a powerfully synthetic and inspiring talk by Congress Chair Vladimir Maletic, MD.

So much for things specific to the Congress. In terms of developments in the larger arena of mental health that made this year’s event so impactful, pride of place must be given to the fact that after a period of relative drought, new interventions have either arrived or are on the horizon.

These interventions are both pharmacological and psychological. For me, one of the more riveting moments of conference came when Vladimir Maletic, MD, linked recent neuroimaging data to the striking effectiveness of Rumination Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a technique almost unknown in the U.S. but gaining increasing traction across the Atlantic. This is just one example of many during which I thought “Finally science and the clinic are coming together to make something new and better”.  Many of us at Congress think this “something new” has a lot to do with the need the shift our therapeutic lens away from a myopic focus on disease to embrace a more holistic understanding of wellness and how to promote it.

I left Congress this year excited to start work on next year’s meeting. We are determined to build upon what made this year’s meeting so great to take things to the next level in 2014. See you in Orlando!