The <scp>WPA</scp> celebrates its 70th birthday
Authors: Vera Sartorius, Norman Sartorius
Journal: World Psychiatry (2020)

The success of the World Congress of Neu-rology in Montreal in 1948 made the psychiatrists who were present (at that time psychiatry and neurology were not yet separated) decide to create an Association for the Organization of the World Congress of Psychiatry. J. Delay, a Professor of Psychiatry from France, took the presidency of the Association and H. Ey, also a French psychiatrist and philosopher, became the secretary of the new Association. One of the reasons for getting actively engaged in this endeavour was the wish of the French psychiatrists to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first World Congress of Psychiatry held in Paris in 1900. After World War II, many people sought to establish links and recreate partnerships. The United Nations were created in 1945, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) in 1946, the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1948, and the World Federation for Mental Health in 1948. The WHO even had a Mental Health Unit, because its first Director General, B. Chisholm, a psychiatrist and colonel from Canada, felt that there is no health without mental health. At that time psychiatrists had few, mainly personal, contacts with their colleagues in other countries. In Europe, links were mainly within zones defined by the four languages of communication – German in Germany, Austria and the countries along the Danube; French in Belgium, France, Italy, Romania and Serbia; Russian in the Soviet Union and its satellites; and English in the UK, Ireland and to an extent in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. UK psychiatrists were in contact with anglophone societies in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and with some of the Asian societies using English; the French and Spanish societies with colleagues in countries using their language. There were very few psychiatrists who had contacts with colleagues from a different language zone. J. Delay and H. Ey began organizing the congress upon their return to France. Since neither of them spoke any language but French, they invited a young psychiatrist who was fluent in several languages, P. Pichot, then in J. Delay's department in Paris (and later a WPA President), to help. Pichot wrote the invitations on his typewriter or by hand and undertook to send them to leading psychiatrists in many countries, including Germany. The French government supported the notion of having the World Congress in France and so the first World Congress of Psychiatry of the new era took place in Paris in 1950. Many mythical psychiatric figures – M. Klein, A. Freud, A. Lewis, E. Stromgren and M. Bleuler among others – came to meet in the Great Amphitheatre of the Sorbonne University. The President of France received the participants. The Congress addressed important topics: the limits of psychiatry, the creation of a common language for the discipline, an international classification of mental disorders, and the standardization of psychological tests for use in psychiatry. It was a great success. The Association for the Organization of International Congresses, now composed of up to fifty members from each of the participating countries, started to prepare the next congress. In 1954, a committee selected Zurich as the congress venue. As its date approached, the liquidation of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 made Bleuler and Ey hesitate about the invitation to psychiatrists from the Soviet block countries, but otherwise everyone was to be invited and welcomed. The second World Congress of Psychi-atry took place in Zurich in 1957 and its main topic was schizophrenia. Russian psy-chiatrists were not invited, and some of the psychiatrists in Eastern European countries could not get a visa from their government to attend. Those who did get a visa were not allowed by their government to bring their spouses along. The vast majority of the world's leaders in psychiatry were among the 3,000 psychiatrists who attended the congress. The participants could speak English, German, French, Italian or Spanish, using a brand-new apparatus for simultaneous translation. All aspects of schizophrenia were given attention, but there were also a few presentations dealing with other matters. One of them was the talk given by R. Kuhn, who presented a new way of treating depression – by imipramine. There were only 17 persons in the audience at that session, one of them being the speaker's spouse. The Association for the Organization of International Congresses mutated into the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) in 1961. It was registered in Switzerland, and its members were societies of psychiatrists, although individual psychiatrists could also be members. World Congresses of Psychiatry followed with 5 to 6-year intervals among them – in Montreal (where it was agreed to create scientific sections in order to give sustained attention to se-lected topics), Madrid, Mexico City, Hon-olulu, Vienna, Athens and Rio de Janeiro. The abuse of psychiatry for political reasons emerged as an issue during the congress in Madrid (1966), dominated the public discussions during the Mexico City congress, led to the Hawaii Declaration in 1977, and to the withdrawal of the Russian as well as of the Bulgarian, Czech and Cuban Psychiatric Associations from the WPA in 1983. During the congress in Athens six years later, the Russian Psychiatric Association invited a WPA commission to visit Russia to explore the conditions in psy-chiatric practice there, and re-joined the WPA. In 1996 the congress, for a second time in Madrid, attracted nearly 10,000 psychiatrists. The Association's General Assembly significantly redrafted the WPA Statutes and Bylaws. The Madrid Declaration on Ethical Standards for Psychiatric Practice was approved1. The WPA initiated several educational programs for psychiatrists and other mental health workers2. New WPA scientific sections came into existence, bringing their total number to 60. The WPA produced a guidance document about the teaching of psychiatry followed in a number of countries3, and started a large international collaborative program against stigma (“Open the Doors”) involving more than 20 countries4. Another major international program dealt with mental health in children and adolescents5. In the next three years, WPA meetings attracted more than 40,000 psychiatrists, and the Association started producing a series of Evidence and Experience in Psychiatry publications (nine volumes)e.g., 6, which were followed by other books, such as three volumes on mental disorders and physical illnesse.g., 7. All these books were translated in several languages. The WPA official journal, World Psychiatry, started its life in 2002 and is now published in ten languages, with an impact factor higher than any other of the 3,000 journals in the social sciences area. The journal reaches an estimated 60,000 psychiatrists worldwide and can be obtained free of charge. The WPA also made a special effort to -facilitate becoming acquainted with the most important works of psychiatry block-ed from general distribution by language: over the years, seven anthologies of key pa-pers produced in languages other than -English were publishede.g., 8. The WPA organized, sponsored or co-sponsored numerous regional, international and thematic scientific meetings in various parts of the world. Some of the material presented during these meetings was published locally, and in addition the Association published many presentations given during world congresses – the most comprehensively published was the congress in Paris, whose proceedings appeared in six volumes, and the congresses in Yokohama and Madrid, whose proceedings consisted of three volumese.g., 9. The next World Congress of Psychiatry, held in Hamburg in 1999, was the first major psychiatric meeting after the World War II in Germany. It was followed by the first World Congress of Psychiatry held in Asia (Yokohama, 2002) and by the first World Congress on the African continent (Cairo, 2005). That year the WPA also started the institutional program on psychiatry for the person, resulting in a textbook and other publications10. The congresses in Prague (2008), Buenos Aires (2011), Madrid (2014) and Berlin (2017) followed. Subsequent-ly, the WPA switched to having an annual World Congress of Psychiatry. Those in Mexico City (2018) and Lisbon (2019) were the first congresses of what is to become a practice of having a congress every year, rotating across Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the Americas and Asia. The WPA now has national psychiatric societies in 120 countries as its members, and assembles more than 250,000 psychiatrists worldwide. It is not only the largest international organization in the field, but also the most ecumenical, covering the many fields of action in psychiatry by its scientific sections, publications and meetings. It is managed by an Executive Committee, has a Board of Zonal Representatives, and a Council bringing together its Past Presidents. Its Secretariat is in Geneva.