Greeting

I am pleased to announce that the 119th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology will be held at PACIFICO Yokohama North from Thursday, June 22 through Saturday, June 24, 2023. The opportunity to hold such a long-established meeting makes me feel both happy and humbled. The only opportunity for Chiba University School of Medicine to host the annual meeting so far the 55th Meeting (1958) presided by Dr. Naomi Araki (third-generation professor). The venue of the 119th Annual Meeting has been already decided to be held not in Chiba, but all psychiatrists in Chiba Prefecture as well as fellows of our School will endeavor to ensure the success of the Meeting.

The theme of the 119th Meeting is formulated as “Psychiatry Looking to the Present and Future – Making the effort to provide the best medical care available to the present patients, and to improve it for the future”. I have been a psychiatrist for about 40 years. During this period, pharmacological treatment, psychotherapy, physical therapy, and other treatments for psychiatric disorders have made an immense progress. Besides, although community care system for persons with mental illnesses is still insufficient, we feel in our everyday clinical practice that the system improves gradually. On the other hand, when we are treating patients, we are often unsure if we are really providing the best of the treatment and support options that are currently available.; not a day goes by that we do not think whether we could do something better, whether or not there are better treatment, whether we could create better support options to make life easier for patients. I believe it is essential to share experience with colleagues, in addition to gaining sufficient knowledge, so as to accept patient’s hopes and make the best choice. I also believe it is important to identify unmet needs, to search solutions from various perspectives, and to advance research toward development of breakthrough solutions. Besides, I suppose that the application of the fruits of advances in psychiatry can greatly benefit the improvement of mental health in various social situations including work and education, family, sports, and performing arts; I believe it is important for psychiatrists to take an active role in creating a more livable society. Getting together of specialists in psychiatry to exchange their knowledge, opinions, and findings is very useful to promote these efforts.

The COVID-19 pandemic that has continued since 2019 affected our annual meetings as well. However, prevention and therapy methods have been established, and the pandemic seems to settling down gradually. I strongly expect that psychiatrists nationwide will meet in the 2023 Annual Meeting for a heated discussion on the present and future of theoretical and clinical psychiatry.

Let us meet at the venue!
Thank you for cooperation.