IACAPAP President's Message Dec 2025
As traditionally done, I would like to begin our last presidential column of 2025 wishing all IACAPAP friends and their families a very happy and healthy 2026! Again, IACAPAP has several achievements to celebrate this year. I invite you for a quick journey summarizing some of them and reviewing what has been achieved at IACAPAP since our previous Bulletin was published.
First, we had a very successful Helmut Remschmidt Research Seminar in Germany lead by Professors Petrus J de Vries and Christina Schwenck, with a stelar group of mentors including Prof. Helmut Remschmidt attending in person and an amazing group of 23 fellows from 17 countries. If you want to have a detailed overview of the program, all fellows, and mentors, please click here and see the article in this Bulletin. The leaders of this initiative, the mentors or myself, could tell you how relevant this initiative is to Child and Adolescent Mental Health, but nothing tells the story better than reading about it from the mentees themselves. Some of them recently published a paper in the Journal European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (Mutlu, M., Canga-Espina, C., Berni, M. et al. 2025 Empowering child and adolescent mental health through evidence-based approaches: reflections from the 10th Helmut Remschmidt research seminar in child and adolescent psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-025-02911-6). For sure, it’s worth reading!
Second, we received an astonishing number of applications for the Donald J. Cohen Fellowship Program (DCFP) – 280 applications. The review committee is analyzing very carefully all applications, and we expect to make available the list of accepted fellows by the mid-January.
Regarding our next World Congress in 2026, the news is equally exciting. We have received 185 symposia submissions. The highest number ever achieved! For the first time, we were not able to extend the deadline for submissions. Considering the number of early registrations, symposia submissions, and applications for DCFP, you should expect a very well-attended congress. Thus, I invite you to register as soon as possible. Please remember that we have space limitations in the venue and we might have to cap registrations at a certain number, as was the case in Rio de Janeiro’s congress. As was said before, we expect to have a scientifically robust program embracing evidence-based, innovative and diverse topics on CAMH. The speakers’ line-up is increasing day-by-day – see more on the congress website. We expect to have the approved list of symposia in early January.
Regarding the two areas of collaboration between IACAPAP and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Child Mind Institute. Here are the updates:
- SNF Global Center Clinical Fellowship Program for Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs): The third cohort of Mozambican fellows, who will initiate training in Brazil in March 2026, was already selected and they are from Beira, a central region in Mozambique. The fellows are Domingas Ferrao – Psychiatrist, Josefina Dulce Sambane – Clinical Psychologist, Esmeralda Manjate – Occupational Therapist. Selecting this final cohort, we now have three teams of professionals to provide care and disseminate knowledge on CAMH in Mozambique. The other excellent news is that thanks to Peter Raucci, Program Director of Fellowships at the SNF Global Center, and Ayesha Mian, representing IACAPAP, everything is in place for the first cohort of Kenyan fellows to begin their training in South Africa in February 2026. By the time you are reading this, the selection process will be completed. Relevant to mention that we had 25 applications.
- SNF Global Center Item Bank – A Free Assessment Tool to Support Culturally Appropriate Global Data Collection for Child and Adolescent Mental Health: The first good news is that we already have a name for the Item Bank – LUMI (Library of Universal Mental Health Instruments). As we did for the naming, we are doing the same comprehensive cocreation process of collecting input from mental health professionals and youths globally for visual identity. It should be defined by the end of December. Regarding the psychometric evaluation, 5250 interviews were conducted across four country groups. Two excellent findings emerged: 1) Most items are invariant to age, country and sex; 2) Strong concurrent validity with one gold-standard CAMH assessment instrument (DWABA). As usual, we encourage you to read more about this work on the SNF Global Center’s website here.
As life is not only good news, the WHO-EML committee did not accept our joint appeal with the World Federation of ADHD to include methylphenidate on the WHO Essential Medicines List. As already mentioned in previous columns, this was the third attempt. Thus, millions of people living in Low-Middle Income Countries, especially those who are more vulnerable, will continue without access to any kind of effective treatment for ADHD since the list is used by several countries to orientate medications to be made available for free to the population.
The nomination process for the next Executive Committee will be completed this month. Thus, this is the time for you to propose leaders who will be at the helm of our association for the next four years!
Our ante-penultimate paragraph is always dedicated to calling your attention to an impactful paper recently published on CAMH in scientific literature. This time, I will come back to a topic already addressed in a previous Bulletin, screen use by youths. A paper published in JAMA last July assessed the trajectories of screen use (social media, mobile phones, and videogame) from baseline through year 4 follow-up in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, with population-based samples from 21 US sites. The outcomes assessed at the 4-year follow up were suicidal behaviors and ideation, internalizing and externalizing symptoms (Xiao Y, Meng Y, Brown TT, Keyes KM, Mann JJ). Addictive Screen Use Trajectories and Suicidal Behaviors, Suicidal Ideation, and Mental Health in US Youths. JAMA. 2025 Jul 15;334(3):219-228. doi: 10.1001/jama.2025.7829). Authors found that both high and increasing screen use trajectories were associated with suicidal behaviors and ideation and worse mental health. Due to the design of the study, we cannot infer causality since these two trajectories might be markers of high and increasing mental health problems in the follow-up. In addition, behavioral factors such as bullying, adverse childhood experiences, social isolation among others that might be confounding the association were also not assessed. Anyhow, this is an extremely relevant topic of concern in CAMH and public health and an area where frequently policy comes before science. For this reason, the WHO launched an initiative to define the research priorities on digital environments and youth mental health for the next three years. The work is being leaded by Orygen from Australia and IACAPAP was invited to participate. If you did not receive an invitation to take part in a Delphi Panel as part of this initiative, you might receive it in the next few days. Expect to have news on this initiative in the next Bulletin!
Finally, regarding the auditable proposed goals in the previous bulletin, they have been partially achieved since:
- The line-up of speakers from diverse countries and cultures for our World Congress in Germany has more than 10 speakers and it is increasing day-by-day. The symposia submission was a tremendous success.
- We had an extremely impressive number of submissions for the Donald Cohen Fellowship Program, and the selection process will be completed soon.
- Everything is ready for our first cohort of Kenyan mentees to begin their training in South Africa in February 2026. However, we have not yet defined another pair of countries for the SNF Global Center Clinical Fellowship Program for Low- and Middle-Income Countries.
- The item bank has a name (LUMI), three final options for visual identity were selected and its psychometric validation is moving smoothly with excellent initial findings.
Our auditable goals up to the next bulletin are:
- Have the program completed for our World Congress in Germany and an expressive number of registrations for the congress.
- Define another pair of countries for the SNF Global Center Clinical Fellowship Program for Low- and Middle-Income Countries.
- Select the visual identity for the LUMI and prepare submissions on the process describing its creation and cultural, linguistic and psychometric validations.
- Take the initial steps to make it available for the worldwide community of CAMH professionals for use in the clinical and research worlds.
- Have a list of research priorities on digital environments and youth mental health for the next three years as a result of collaborative work with WHO and Orygen.
I hope you all enjoy reading our Bulletin.
