Greetings from Antwerp

Welcome to #EFPTAntwerp16! If you weren't there, this Newsletter will offer you a glimpse of this year's Forum atmosphere and an overview of its highlights. If you were there, this would be a great occasion for reminiscing about all your favourite Forum memories. Undeniably it has been five most intense days, full of emotion, inspiration and creativity. For many, including myself, it seems they passed almost in the blink of an eye - yet in those five days we have laid the groundwork for an entire new year full of EFPT successes.

On behalf of our local organising committee, I can say it has been a true privilege and an honour to host all of you in our humble country and city. We were very proud and happy to see the EFPT family grow continuously and to welcome delegates from 38 countries this year, including parts of Europe that we had not managed to reach before. We were delighted to see all of you embrace the EFPT spirit, and we hope the friendships and collaborations that have been forged in the course of these days will grow.

The LOC of the Antwerp Forum would like to thank everyone for their kind words and positive feedback, which definitely made all our efforts worth it! However, we know there are always things that can be improved. If you attended the Forum this year, we would therefore like to invite you to please take a minute to give us your (anonymous) feedback in this online survey, which will help us give EFPT delegates an even better experience at future Forums.
 
As my term as president has come to its end at the Forum's general assembly, this will also be the last EFPT Newsletter from which I reach out to you directly. I am happy to introduce to you our new president Ekin Sönmez - and her newly elected board, who will steer our Federation into new and hopeful horizons. I want to thank you, our faithful readers, for bearing with us and I encourage you to share this newsletter with your colleagues at home.

Finally, I want to express my utmost gratitude and respect to my fellow members of the EFPT board 2015-2016, to my dedicated colleagues at the local organising committee, and to everyone who has helped us and contributed along the way to make this year's Forum another successful stop in the EFPT journey.

Truly looking forward to see you all again soon!

Livia

EFPT Award for Excellence

On World Mental Health Day 2015, almost 1200 people took over 5 million steps to raise awareness of mental health disorders in Sweden, in addition to raising money to initiatives to improve mental health. The Mental Health Run won Sweden the EFPT Award for Excellence.

Positively psychiatry

"Do not talk about stigma. Get out there and promote excellence at every opportunity." J. Beezhold, EFPT Forum 2016.

For EFPT trainees, psychiatry is one of the best things that has come along our way, and we see it as our mission to share our love and pride for our profession with the world. The opening day of the Forum featured a "Positively Psychiatry" thematic afternoon challenging trainees' views on stigma and how trainees can have an impact on the image of their profession. In addition, all country delegations were asked to bring and present a poster showing initiatives to promote psychiatry in their country.

FYR of Macedonia not only attended the EFPT Forum for the first time, they also won the Best Country Poster Award for "Positively Psychiatry". Find out how they feel after experiencing EFPT for the first time! At the bottom of the page, you can see all the posters from this year.

Teresa Gomez Alemany from Barcelona, Spain, is the new representative for child and adolescent psychiatry on the board.

With leading experts throughout the medical field calling attention to an increasing need to close the gap between bench and bedside, acuiring clinical research skills cannot be seen distinct from psychiatry training anymore. Nowadays many trainees engage in some research activity, even if it means doing so in their free time besides working full time clinical shifts. The EFPT International Research in Psychiatry Day - themed "Mind the Gap" - offered trainees the opportunity to present their own work to their peers and train their oral presentation skills. Fourteen colleagues took on the challenge to convince the audience and the jury of the importance of their work. Pavel Trancik from Czech Republic was enthusiastic to breathe new life into his national trainee association's engagement with EFPT. Besides his overwhelming enthusiasm, he also took home the Best Oral Presentation prize for his presentation called "Stigma hurts. Let's lose it!". Check out his testimonial about his experience and his work.

Meanwhile, trainees were improving their scientific transferable skills by learning how to convincingly present their work to an audience and how to get their research published. We challenged trainees to dive deeper in ethical dilemmas of psychiatric practice, including special fields of research - such as suicide and euthanasia - and primed their taste for innovation with a symposium on e-psychiatry and an exclusive hands-on demonstration of simulation techniques as a different way to teach psychiatry by SLAM (Simulation Learning at Maudsley, London).

See our calendar for upcoming events.