The 2021‐2024 Work Plan of WPA Collaborating Centres

The network of WPA Collaborating Centres was established in 2016 with the aim to provide practical advice on teaching, policy, research and clinical activities in psychiatry worldwide¹. In 2021, the network has been renewed for three years in order to support the implementation of the WPA Presidential Strategic Plan² and to build a global alliance for better mental health.

The network now includes eight sites: the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, India; the Department of Psychiatry of the Chinese University of Hong Kong; the Africa Mental Health Research and Training Foundation (AMHRTF) in Nairobi, Kenya; the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of Cape Town, South Afri­ca; the Okasha Institute of Psychiatry, Fac­ulty of Med­icine, Ain Shams University, Cai­ro, Egypt; the Department of Psychiatry and Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, UK; the Department of Psychiatry, University of Campania “L. Vanvitelli”, Naples, Italy; and the Department of Psychiatry at Sidra Medicine in Doha, Qatar. This last site has been included among the Collaborating Centres in 2021 with a special focus on wom­en and children’s mental health.

The WPA Collaborating Centres have de­veloped a Work Plan for the period 2021‐2024 focusing on the following topics: a) multi‐morbidities in patients with severe mental disorders, in collaboration with the WPA Working Group on Physical Comorbidities led by N. Sartorius; b) implementation of the ICD‐11, with the dissemination of training materials, bearing in mind local contexts; c) policy, legislation and pro­tection of human rights, in order to develop a WPA policy position paper and a campaign on protecting human rights of patients with mental disorders worldwide; d) adolescent mental health, focusing on the development and dissemination of innovative prevention and intervention programmes in youth; e) community men­tal health in low‐ and middle‐income countries; f) COVID‐19 and mental health response; g) development of high‐quality WPA Global Seminars, which will be made available to the WPA Member Societies and posted on the WPA website; and h) development and/or update of WPA Position Statements, with the active involvement of trainees and early career researchers.

Given the current pandemic situation, the network has included in its Work Plan a special focus on COVID‐19, in particular on challenges and difficulties to manage the psychosocial consequences of the pandemic, and the responses from the mental health sector worldwide3, 4, 5, 6. Moreover, the Centres will share and disseminate policy papers, clinical guidelines and research doc­uments in order to improve patient care and public mental health.

The network actively collaborates with many WPA Scientific Sections7, 8, 9, including the Section on Education in Psychiatry¹⁰ and the Section of Early Career Psychiatrists11, 12, in order to identify the unmet educational needs for early career psychiatrists and to provide scholarship opportunities for medical students and psychiatric trainees across the different WPA Member Societies.

The work of the Collaborating Centres will be presented at major WPA Conferences and through policy papers and educational materials¹³, which will be made available to the entire WPA community.