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WELCOME ADDRESS
WELCOME
ADDRESS
Dear colleagues,
It is my great pleasure to welcome you on
behalf of the German Association for Psychi-
atry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics to
this year’s DGPPN congress.
In the coming decades demographic change
will also significantly alter our specialty
“psychiatry and psychotherapy” and the de-
mands on the diagnosis, therapy and care
of mental disorders. Although increasing
life expectancy is associated with a gain in
healthy life years, it is also accompanied by
an increase in illnesses associated with older
age, such as dementias, age-related depres-
sion, age-related psychoses and anxiety dis-
orders. The changing population structures
and lifestyles create new risk factors and
courses of mental disorders. Our treatment
offerings have to be improved and newly de-
veloped accordingly. At the same time, work
intensification and specialisation are putting
increasing pressure on middle-aged people,
who carry the rising costs of the pension
and health care systems.
This key topic will be addressed in manifold
ways in plenary presentations and lectures.
The demographer J. W. Vaupel will speak on
“How will the rise in longevity affect cogni-
tive functioning?”. M. Breteler will talk about
“Lifestyle and the aging brain” and a pres-
idential symposium will examine the ques-
tion “Demographic change, altered develop-
mental psychology and pathology?”
Biomedical basic research has performed
good groundwork for the development of
targeted prevention and treatment strate-
gies for older people. Our understanding
of the brain, its aging and its resilience re-
serves can, through translational research,
significantly expand today’s treatment op-
tions. This is particularly true for Alzhei-
mer’s disease. The status and chances of this
development will be another main focus of
the DGPPN congress and will be addressed
as part of the “Breakthroughs in psychiatry”
series, among others.
One of the main goals in our specialty is to
also overcome the stagnation in the develop-
ment of treatments for mental disorders in
middle age. A particular highlight in this re-
spect will be the plenary lecture by the neu-
roscientist and Nobel laureate T. C. Südhof,
who will speak about molecular biological
processes in schizophrenia and autism.
The use of advances in basic research and in
the development of new intervention strate-
gies to combat disease is also shaping clin-
ical research in our specialty. In his plenary
lecture F. Holsboer will present pioneering
perspectives in depression treatment.
The neurobiologist C. B. Nemeroff will
speak on the topic of early childhood trauma
and later mental disorders in his plenary lec-
ture “The neurobiology of child abuse and
neglect”. The enormous advances in knowl-
edge about the neurobiology of interperson-
al and social behaviour have significantly
changed our understanding of both mental
disorders and also everyday behaviour. For
example, in one lecture L. J. Young will ex-
plore the chemistry of love and bonding.
The developments taking place in society
raise urgent ethical questions that are highly
relevant for our specialty: How can we protect
older people’s dignity and autonomy in case
of chronic illness? What should be prioritised
as resources become increasingly scarce, how
much healing and how much supportive med-
icine is required? In a large number of sym-
posia we will address ethical aspects of treat-
ment such as patient autonomy, patient rights
