World Psychiatric Association regional congress 2014
The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) is a nongovernmental organization in official relations with the World Health Organization (WHO).[5][6] It brings together 135 national psychiatric societies from 177 countries, representing more than 200,000 psychiatrists worldwide, and convenes the World Congress of Psychiatry.[7]
Originally created to produce world psychiatric congresses, it has evolved to hold regional meetings, to promote professional education and to set ethical, scientific and treatment standards for psychiatry.[7]
Jean Delay was the first president of the Association for the Organization of World Congresses of Psychiatry when it was started in 1950.[2]Donald Ewen Cameron became president of the World Psychiatric Association at its formal founding in 1961.[2][8]
In February 1983, the Soviet All-Union Society of Neurologists and Psychiatrists resigned from the World Psychiatric Association. This resignation occurred as a preemptive action amid a movement to expel the Soviet body from the global organization due to political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union.[9][10] The Soviet body was conditionally readmitted into the World Psychiatric Association in 1989, following some improvements in human rights conditions,[11] and an intensive debate among the association's delegates, in which the acting secretary of the Soviet delegation issued a statement conceding that "previous political conditions in the U.S.S.R. created an environment in which psychiatric abuse occurred, including for nonmedical reasons."[12]
As of 2016,[update] the institutional members of the World Psychiatric Association are 145 national psychiatric societies in 121 countries representing more than 250,000 psychiatrists worldwide.[3] The societies are clustered into 18 zones and four regions: the Americas, Europe, Africa & Middle East, and Asia & Australasia.[16] Representatives of the societies constitute the World Psychiatric Association General Assembly, the governing body of the organization.[16][17] The association also has individual members and there are provisions for affiliation of other associations (e.g., those dealing with a particular topic in psychiatry).[16][17] There are 66 scientific sections.[3]
Publications
The official publication of the association is World Psychiatry.[18]World Psychiatry and the association's official books are published by Wiley-Blackwell.[19] WPA also self-publishes a quarterly newsletter on its website.[20]
Several WPA scientific sections have their own official journals and newsletters:
↑"Archive of "World Psychiatry"". PubMed Central. National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine. Archived from the original on January 15, 2009. Retrieved 2009-06-18.
↑"Archives of women's mental health". NLM Catalog. National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
↑"Art & Psychiatry". World Psychiatric Association. Archived from the original on 26 December 2016. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
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