Letter from the President

Dear CINP Members,

My Presidency of the CINP begins at a time of great controversy, change and opportunity in our field.  We celebrated in Munich the 50th anniversary of the CINP, the original and in the past only major organization of its type. The 50th anniversary included some delightful looks at the past but with the rapid rate of global change we must rally all our strength to adapt to the future.  Today the CINP competes with numerous national and continental organizations for the attention of scientists and clinicians.  We must find ways to collaborate and cooperate with other organizations in the field, based on the CINP's unique global perspective.  If we wish to celebrate our 100th anniversary in another 50 years we must like so many classic institutions adapt to the rapidly changing world.  The public criticism of relationships between physician prescribers, physician scientists and the pharmaceutical industry has reached new heights in recent years. While we may not agree with many of the criticisms we cannot ignore them. The CINP has established a Code of Conduct Committee and a major goal of my Presidency will be to bring this Code of Conduct to acceptance as official policy and to allow its full discussion among our membership and participants in the Hong Kong CINP in 2010.  The CINP on this basis can facilitate clinical trials training worldwide.
The world is going on line, as we know, and another major goal of my Presidency will be to convert to an online format as many of our membership activities as possible including our membership directory, elections for the Executive Committee and the CINP newsletter to create an international psychopharmacology community.  We must include maximally the rapidly developing psychopharmacology science in Asia, where our 2010 meeting will be held.   While we partner with a vigorous private pharmaceutical industry, we must also pay attention to countries where large portions of the population have no access to psychopharmacology treatment.  I propose a CINP effort to compile a formulary of essential antipsychotic, antidepressant, anxiolytic,  mood stabilizer and other treatments that should be available universally even in the poorest countries.  The diversity of opinions within our discipline is immense and it is my goal to make sure that the widest possible diversity of opinion be included in our organization to make our meetings  exciting and relevant. The CINP's credibility must be unimpeachable even and perhaps especially when new data suggests side effects or reduced efficacy for treatments that we have used widely.  We must relate thoughtfully and not competitively to new scientific and clinical trial data on psychotherapeutic and brain stimulation treatments.

The rapidly expanding neurosciences have as we know not yet been always translated into clinically effective patient treatments.  We hope the CINP meetings will be a place where thoughtful clinicians and clinician scientists can be inspired from new neuroscience developments to create heuristic clinical hypotheses.  The founding generation of the CINP and its followers (and I say this as someone whose first CINP meeting was 30 years ago!) are rapidly reaching retirement age.  We must devote ourselves to fully including in all of our activities a strong younger generation.  

Prof. Robert H. Belmaker