Dear colleagues,

It’s a great pleasure to invite you to the 2023 Summer School on Mental Health  which will take place in Thessaloniki Greece on 14-15^th July this year.

The school aims at being valuable for the clinicians who fight daily in the front line for the treatment of real-world patients. In this frame, our goal is to provide a global and comprehensive update of the newest developments in Psychiatry and the allied sciences in a manner, which will be both focused and enriched. The rule is always to avoid content-free eloquence and authority and to face hard questions on the base of research findings, under the auspice and with the collaboration of the most prominent international societies. During these difficult circumstances for the world, advanced education and training is the only way to the future. Novel and advanced technologies and approaches are emerging.

Teaching clinical usefulness and application of new knowledge and informed treatment with psychopharmacological agents in a truly multidisciplinary approach will be the central axis of the meeting and although the congress will embrace high tech research concerning psychopathology, new treatment methods, genetics and molecular biology, it also aims on putting the emphasis on the human factor, both the therapist and the patient. Apart from the humanistic tradition of Psychiatry and life sciences, the continuous and unconditional investment on the high level training of professionals and education of patients and their families, emerged as a significant challenge during the last few decades. Medical scientists and public health policy makers are increasingly concerned that the scientific discoveries are failing to be translated efficiently into tangible human benefit. Today, in an all the more complex and technologically advanced environment, the human factor emerges again as the most valuable one, the factor that determines the final outcome.

As hosts and organizers, we shall spare no effort in making your participation scientifically rewarding and meaningful. Let the rainbow dominate our sky after the storm.

Konstantinos N. Fountoulakis
Professor of Psychiatry
Director, 3rd Department of Psychiatry, Division of Neurosciences
School of Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece