WELCOME TO COPENHAGEN
from the Programme Committee
How strange that the last IAYMH conference announcement noted that much had changed in youth mental health since the first conference held in 2010. For what could have been more devastating for young people’s mental health and well-being than the COVID-19 pandemic?
IAYMH 2022 will be the occasion for our community to take stock of where it stands, the distance it has come and, most importantly, what it needs to do and where it needs to go to address new realities. In addition to exposing and exacerbating inequities within and across societies, the pandemic has laid bare the vulnerabilities of young people around the world. Deep-rooted, long-felt concerns about economic, social and ecological justice, made concrete and urgent by the pandemic, are gnawing away at youths’ wellbeing.
What can and should the integrated youth mental health movement do in this situation? The 6th International Conference on Youth Mental Health, Reimagining, will lead the global conversation through youth engagement, research, innovations in practice and policy.
IAYMH 2022 will bring together young people, their supporters, clinicians, researchers, policymakers and funders to grapple with this and other questions pertinent to reimagining youth mental health.
As ever, young people will play a pivotal role in planning, designing and sharing their insights at the conference. Please watch out for and help promote the call abstracts that opens today, the forthcoming call for submissions for the youth bursaries and introductions to our three youth co-conveners.
We look forward to welcoming you to Denmark for a conference that will surely be worth the wait!
Srividya Iyer, IAYMH 2022 Program Committee Chair, IAYMH Vice President
Merete Nordentoft, IAYMH 2022 Program Committee Local Co-Chair
Patrick McGorry, IAYMH President
Associate Professor Srividya Iyer, Canada
Srividya Iyer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and an Associate Member in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
She is a licensed psychologist and a researcher at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute. Her work focuses on youth mental health and early intervention, including for serious mental health problems such as psychosis.
She seeks to ensure that more young people worldwide have timely access to appropriate, youth-friendly mental healthcare and enjoy well-being and social participation.
Srividya partners closely with young people, families and communities to influence real-world practice and policy in Canada and globally.
She leads ACCESS Open Minds, a pan-Canadian network of 250+ diverse stakeholders that is transforming mental healthcare for urban, rural, Indigenous, post-secondary and homeless youths at 16 sites across Canada.
She has been contributing to several other youth-focused services, research and capacity-building efforts, including in India, where she was born. She is a part of the World Psychiatric Association’s working group on Early Intervention in Mental Disorders in low- and middle-income countries.
Srividya has received numerous awards and was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2017 and named on the inaugural list of Canadian Women leaders in Global Health.
In 2021, she was elected Vice President of the International Association for Youth Mental Health.
Professor Merete Nordentoft, Denmark
She is an expert in epidemiology, suicidal behaviour, psychopathology and early intervention in psychosis. She has led the process from research to implementation of early intervention services all over Denmark.
Professor Nordentoft has worked with suicide prevention at a national level since 1997 and together with a group of epidemiologists from Nordic countries, she has demonstrated that life expectancy for people with schizophrenia is 15 to 20 years shorter than in the general population.
Professor Nordentoft was given the prestigious awards: The Golden Scalpel, Global Excellence in Health, and the Richard Wyatt Award.
Program Committee Members
Ireland
Jo Fitzsimons
Australia
Henriette Grundtmann
Trine Hammershoy
Christian Kieling
Brazil
Fatima-Zahra Ma-el-ainin
Turkey
Professor Patrick McGorry
Australia
Professor Rosemary Purcell
Australia
Dr Magenta Simmons
Australia
Dr Jimmy Tan
Canada