Implementation of the WPA Action Plan 2020‐2023: an update

The year 2021 has been another tough one for us all. Uncertainty about the COVID situation, restrictions about travel, and difficulties in getting connected have been the major issues that have affected our professional work and personal lives during that year. The WPA has also struggled coping with these limitations. However, that period has given us some motivation and new insight to work under difficult circumstances and to continue with the implementation of our Action Plan 2020‐2023 ¹ , ² .

The WPA Executive Committee and Standing Committees, along with the Secretariat staff, remained committed to fulfil their responsibilities ³ , ⁴ , ⁵ , ⁶ , ⁷ , ⁸ . The WPA’s drive to encourage and inspire learning among colleagues and trainees around the world led to offering more online educational activities during 2021. We were delighted to organize, support and promote several new educational modules, courses, teaching sessions and online programmes ⁹ .

The accelerated development of the WPA education portal and learning management system (LMS) has promoted the launch of new education and training modules to support our young professionals, es­pecially for the emergency response mea­sures during the pandemic period. The first of these modules supports psychiatrists in using e‐mental health tools. The portal also gives ready access to WPA’s existing training materials available in several languages. Available programmes also include ICD‐11 and Yoga courses, free webinars on Early Intervention in Psychosis, updates in Psychopharmacology and courses on Tele‐psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

We continued with our projects outlined in the Action Plan. Various Working Groups offered a number of activities in ar­­eas of training, research and clinical updates. The Working Groups on Co‐morbidity in Mental Illnesses, Early Intervention in Psychosis, Public Mental Health, and Promotion of Psychiatry among Medical Students highlighted their contributions in various activities ¹⁰ , ¹¹ , ¹² . I am pleased that we also completed some unfinished projects started in the previous triennium ¹³ . The WPA Scientific Sections likewise supported the scientific work of the Association in an inspiring way ¹⁴ , ¹⁵ , ¹⁶ .

Since the start of the network of WPA Collaborating Centres in 2016, these centres are providing practical advice on teach­ing, policy, research and clinical activities in psychiatry worldwide. During 2021, the network, now including eight sites, supported the implementation of the WPA’s strategic plan to build a global alliance for better mental health ¹⁷ .

In addition to the pandemic, unfortunately, we saw many adversities in 2021 in several parts of the world. Following WPA’s mission to help and support our member­ship during disasters, we established an Ad­visory Committee for Responses to Emer­gencies (ACRE), that brought together the leaders of the larger Member Societies to fa­cilitate practical and concrete aid to Mem­ber Societies in need. This work contin­ued mobilizing and fostering education, in­formation collection, and development of lo­cal, national and international strategies to cope with the mental health conse­quenc­es of emergencies throughout 2020‐21.

The WPA recently formed a sub‐committee of the ACRE for Afghanistan’s deteriorating conditions, that are not only causing an humanitarian crisis but also adding concerns about provisions and delivery of health care for the general population. We, at the WPA, as a part of our ACRE project, are working with our fellow Afghan mental health professionals to offer ongoing support through the provision of medicines, patient assessments and training.

With the start of the WPA eNewsletter in 2021, we are facilitating sharing of activities and reports from our membership. The Newsletter has emerged as a strong medium for our visibility on the social media platform and a better communication among different components of the Association.

World Psychiatry, the WPA official jour­nal, achieved an impact factor of 49.548. It was reaffirmed that it is ranked as the number one in the list of psychiatric journals and in the Social Science Citation Index, and number five among all the journals in the Clinical Medicine category. The journal is published regularly in three languages (English, Spanish and Russian), with individual issues or articles also available on the WPA website in other languages (Chinese, French, Arabic, Turkish, Japanese, Romanian and Polish). More than 60,000 mental health professionals regularly receive the electronic or the print version of the journal. All the back issues can be freely downloaded from the PubMed system and the WPA website.

We very much enjoyed our successful virtual World Congress of Psychiatry that took place in October 2021. As always, the current pandemic is all about adapting and innovating, and we feel that we were able to redesign the event from the ground up to ensure that we could bring the most timely clinical, academic and research topics to our membership. I am also pleased that we are actively working for our next World Congress to be held in Bangkok on August 3‐6, 2022.

We are optimistic that the new challenges that will undoubtedly come, as the full impact on mental health following this pandemic becomes evident, will be addressed effectively. Like many, the WPA is learning fast with the changes and looks forward with confidence to its future, remaining fully committed to fulfilling its triennium’s goals.

Let's shape the future of psychiatry and mental health together.