Croatian Society for Clinical Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, Croatian Medical Association
Croatian Institute for Research and Education on Mental Health
Zibeline Publishing International
in cooperation with
School of Medicine, University of Zagreb
Danubian Psychiatric Association
International Academy of Sciences and Arts in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Organize
THE 1st CHINESE-CROATIAN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY:
GLOBAL MENTAL HEALTH, APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY: EMERGING CHALLENGES OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Dubrovnik, September 8-11, 2022
Dear colleagues,
It is my great pleasure and honor to invite you to participate at the First Chinese-Croatian Conference on global mental health and emerging challenges of the 21st century. Global mental health is the international perspective on different aspects of mental health that is of huge importance today, much more than ever before. We should all be driven by the vision of psychiatry and psychology for a better world and promotion of mental health for all. Improving treatment strategies for mental disorders is considered as a central health challenge of the dawn of the 21st century, but promoting public and global mental health may be an even more important challenge. Humankind has never before faced such multidimensional existential problems as nowadays, and, at the same time, despite the powerful scientific and technological possibilities, is unable to address the scope and solution of these firing-line issues. With COVID-19 pandemic and misinfodemics and additionally with the war in Ukraine, our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world has fundamentally shifted into the zone of higher risk, with multitude of dangers affecting our public and global mental health. Our VUCA world of ethical relativism, individualism, selfishness, global rivalries, wars, free market where everything can be commoditized, seems to be floating over the abyss of many different contradictions and seesaws of war and peace, hatred and love, dys-empathy and empathy, collective insanity and mental health, clash of civilizations and empathic civilization, dark anti-Utopia/Dystopia and Utopia… The appropriate responses to these issues are well suited for the field of global mental health, an evolving interdisciplinary field of research and wide-ranging practice in order to alleviate mental suffering and promote mental health for all. Global problems need global solutions so culture of empathy, cooperation and partnership is the only route that offers any hope of mental health as a global public good for the better future of all humanity.
Dubrovnik, a beautiful city which is on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites, is a right place where we can promote ideas of strategic harmony, empathic civilization and global mental health for the better future of our world. George Bernard Shaw said: “Those who seek paradise on Earth should come to Dubrovnik”. As cultures, nations, societies, and individual human beings we have to learn how to live together in empathy, harmony and friendship to promote public and global mental health and resist influences that turn us against each other. As we all agree that there is no health without mental health you are welcome to join us in the beautiful Dubrovnik and to give you contribution to promotion of global mental health.
On the behalf of the Organizing Committee
Prof. dr. Miro Jakovljevic