As we start a new governance period in the life of the WPA, it is befitting to celebrate our roots and the path traveled, to consider where we are, and to be energized by our objectives.
We must celebrate our founders' perception 55 years ago in Paris of a common professional identity beyond geographic and theoretical barriers and the need to be associated into an international body to advance psychiatry and mental health scientifically, humanistically and ethically across the world.
We may want to recognize among our institutional landmarks the organization, from the beginning of our history, of World Congresses first every six years and more recently every three. The inauguration of Scientific Sections in 1961 afforded us institutional continuity in between Congresses. Our ethical code was first formalized in Hawaii in 1977, and was then enriched at several ensuing general assemblies. Educational programs were started as a major WPA activity in 1990. A first attempt at institutional strategic planning was witnessed in 1993, to be systematized in more recent years. A modern service-oriented Secretariat was established in 1996 and multiple lines of institutional work (sections, publications, meetings, education) were operationalized as well.
We have now 130 national Member Societies, and growing, as well as 64 Scientific Sections, with a few more in the pipeline. We have as well a respected, indexed and widely distributed official journal, an expanding website and a growing panel of continuing medical education credits, major International Congresses in years without a World Congress, and an institutional budget with a reserve fund. Illustrating our momentum, our biggest Member Societies are now eager to participate in our leadership structures and to extend themselves internationally through the WPA, while our mid-size and smaller Societies are increasingly protagonist in our institutional life. And we just come from celebrating a special 13th World Congress of Psychiatry, our first in Africa, with the richest scientific program in our history, the largest ever fellowship and young psychiatrist effort, and an unprecedented 110 Member Societies represented at the General Assembly.
And what about the future? The WPA Strategic Plan 2005- 2008, prepared on the basis of the WPA General Survey, an evaluation of the previous Strategic Plan, and a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis, and recently approved by the General Assembly, has put forward 14 broad goals. These encompass optimizing the fulfillment of WPA constitutional purposes (including those least attended to previously), strengthening our Member Societies (particularly those in developing countries), promoting the position of our normative instruments in WPA life, emphasizing participatory and decentralized governance, promoting collaboratively ethics in mental health care at all levels, strengthening WPA relations with patient/user organizations, critically appraising and helping to shape world psychiatry, implementing fully the WPA Permanent Secretariat, continuing the promotion of the professional development of young psychiatrists as the future of our field (through congress fellowships and the Young Psychiatrists Council and Network), enhancing WPA Sections' integrated activities and communication with Member Societies, improving the geographic distribution, professional organization and academic quality of scientific meetings, upgrading the editorial and publishing capacity of WPA, advancing partnerships with international organizations, including the World Health Organization, on broad objectives such as person-centered and contextualized clinical care and greater attention to underserved world regions, and improving and consolidating WPA financial status through the Corporate Supporters program and long range financial planning.
The new Strategic Plan also includes 30 specific goals in the various sectors of WPA activity. To implement them, the members of our new Executive Committee and 18 Zone Representatives are now busy preparing their triennial workplans.
Highlighting major thrusts of our Strategic Plan, I have proposed "Institutional Consolidation and Global Impact: Towards a Psychiatry for the Person" as the presidential theme for 2005-2008. Working together we shall succeed. In the words of the Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo, "there is, brothers, much to be done".