President’s Report (2019)
HAPA President’s Report for the 20th HAPA Annual meeting
Philip Candilis, MD
March 14, 2019
During this past year, HAPA has seen enormous energy from the collaboration with our HAPA Greek colleagues. We have conducted a series of initiatives from the participation in the Salonika Expo in September, the inauguration of the first HAPA International Conference at the War Museum in Athens, to consultations on our work with refugees in November.
HAPA’s presence at the Salonika Expo, organized expertly by Drs. Karampoutakis and Pagkalos, allowed us to meet our colleagues in academia, law enforcement, and politics, while the HAPA conference in Athens brought in Drs. Lymberis, Polyniki, and Candilis to talk about current projects from our centers.
Dr. Karampoutakis consulted to our work with the NGOs (training on trauma and resilience), while opening doors to government agencies with an interest in forensic assessment, especially risk and radicalization. We plan on a future training in the US for our Greek colleagues with an interest in forensic psychiatry; this is tentatively planned for the week prior to APA 2020, with a faculty from the Washington DC programs.
Research HAPA projects for our teams include a survey of radicalization influences on inmates and a survey of aid-workers on the risks arising from refugees. These can be important contributions to the discussion of how nations manage immigration and refugee crises.
Management of our website has now shifted to Greece, with a number of important postings there and on social media about the educational efforts of our Greek colleagues, especially Dr. Pagkalos.
We look forward to another fruitful year in 2019-2020.
