The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) is an international umbrella organisation of psychiatric societies.

Objectives and goals

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.

History

Jean Delay was the first president of the Association for the Organization of World Congresses of Psychiatry when it was started in 1950. Donald Ewen Cameron became president of the World Psychiatric Association at its formal founding in 1961. 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. The Soviet body was conditionally readmitted into the World Psychiatric Association in 1989, following some improvements in human rights conditions, 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." Danuta Wasserman is president, and Thomas G. Schulze is president-elect.

Structure

the institutional members of the World Psychiatric Association are 145 national psychiatric societies in 121 countries representing more than 250,000 psychiatrists worldwide. The societies are clustered into 18 zones and four regions: the Americas, Europe, Africa & Middle East, and Asia & Australasia. Representatives of the societies constitute the World Psychiatric Association General Assembly, the governing body of the organization. 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). There are 66 scientific sections.

Publications

The official publication of the association is World Psychiatry. World Psychiatry and the association's official books are published by Wiley-Blackwell. WPA also self-publishes a quarterly newsletter on its website. Several WPA scientific sections have their own official journals and newsletters:

Activities

The association has helped establish a code of professional ethics for psychiatrists. The association has also looked into charges regarding China's treatment of the Falun Gong.