Welcome to the EPA 2021 Interactive Programme

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Fully Live with Live Q&A On Demand with Live Q&A  ECP Session Section Session EPA Course (Pre-Registration Required) Product Theatre

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29 Sessions
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Clinical/Therapeutic
Date
Tue, 13.04.2021
Session Time
08:00 - 09:30
Room
Channel 6
Session Description
The Live Q&A of this session will take place in the Live Sessions auditorium. Please refer to the interactive programme for the exact time and channel.

Proposed by the EPA Section on Neuroimaging and Epidemiology and Social Psychiatry -Refining our understanding of developmental trajectories of mental disorders will allow us to identify early those patients most likely to develop persistence impairment in mental health as well as those patients which will benefit most from treatment. Because of the limited viability of treating all cases, it is particularly important to find out individual determinants predisposing to worst outcome or to a better response to treatment. The key role of social and environmental risk factors, within a gene-environment interplay framework, in precipitating and maintaining specific trajectories in mental disorders will be pointed out in different representative samples. In the same way, alterations in neurobiology and neuroimaging biomarkers which have been associated to developmental patterns leading to different mental health outcome will be critically revised in the light of recent evidence-based results.

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Pre-Recorded with Live Q&A, Section
EPA Course
Date
Tue, 13.04.2021
Session Time
17:30 - 19:30
Room
Courses Hall A
Session Description
Proposed by the EPA Section on TeleMental Health - Telemental health care or Telepsychiatry (TP) is the use of telecommunication and information technologies to deliver psychiatric and mental health services at a distance. The evidence-base for this field of psychiatry has rapidly grown, over the past years. Evidence related to faculty and trainee competencies is strong for TP direct service and consultation to primary care. Promising evidence is accumulating also for asynchronous video and Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy. New research fields concerning technology-based self-help and support groups, clinical use of social media, smartphone apps for self-care (e.g., anxiety and depression management) and other e-mental health applications are also rapidly emerging. TP interventions increase access to mental healthcare, result in quality of care equivalent to in-person care and often reduce costs. Competencies that focus on skills, more than knowledge, can help clinicians adjust to differences with in-person care, ensure quality, and prevent and manage potential challenges (e.g., boundary, privacy and other regulatory issues; barriers to assessment; therapeutic barriers). Telemental health care (spanning across psychiatry, psychology, social work, counseling, marriage and family) and social media competences are today necessary also in routine settings. The course will provide a knowledge base about TP, a rationale for use of TP approach in a variety of psychiatric settings and practical hints about how to deliver TP care in a wide range of populations. The course will be organized in collaboration with the EPA Early Career Psychiatrists Committee and its Chair (M. Pinto da Costa) will act as a Course Facilitator.
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Live, Section, Ticket Required, Sessions with Voting
Mental Health Policy
Date
Tue, 13.04.2021
Session Time
17:30 - 19:00
Room
Channel 3
Session Description
The Live Q&A of this session will take place in the Live Sessions auditorium. Please refer to the interactive programme for the exact time and channel.

Proposed by the EPA Section on Mental Health and Intellectual Disability -The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is a taxonomy of health and health-related domains. It provides a common language and framework for describing the level of functioning of a person within their unique environment. Furthermore, it helps to describe health problems of a person in line with the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). ICF aims to provide a patient-centred approach to the assessment and management of people with chronic health conditions, mental disorders and intellectual disabilities (ID) by defining individual therapeutic goals and monitoring functional outcomes. The ICF also plays an important role in psychiatric rehabilitation, describing health problems due to mental illnesses and neurodevelopmental disorders. ICF facilitates a comprehensive multidisciplinary approach to assess an individual’s level of functioning and care. Use of a standardised classification system to assess and document biopsychosocial function helps to further support provision of high-quality individualised health and social care. Furthermore, ICF provides a standardised assessment instrument to determine individual functional needs for the care, rehabilitation and societal integration of individuals with disabilities which is a statutory requirement in many European countries. For example, in Germany, the revision of the Federal Participation Act (BTHG) requires the use of ICF as a standardised assessment instrument for determining individual functional needs of individuals with ID. Main objective of the workshop is to introduce the ICF and discuss its advantages and limitations in clinical practice, research, psychiatric treatment and care of individuals with ID and mental health problems.

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Pre-Recorded with Live Q&A, Section
EPA Course
Date
Mon, 12.04.2021
Session Time
08:00 - 10:00
Room
Courses Hall A
Session Description
Proposed by the EPA Section on Old Age Psychiatry - Despite advances in psychopharmacology, up to 30% of patients with psychiatric condition continue to experience disabling symptoms despite being on medication. Thanks to their ability to modulate cerebral networks, non-invasive brain stimulation methods have been proposed as an alternative method to alleviate symptoms in patients with treatment resistant psychiatric conditions, especially depression, schizophrenia and substance use disorders. Non-invasive brain stimulation methods cover a broad range of approaches including electroconvulsivotherapy (ECT), repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), transcranial electrical stimulation (tES: tDCS, tRNS, tACS, tSOS,…). The course will have four sections: 1) Overview of rTMS and tDCS methods -Brief presentations of their main indications in psychiatry (depression, schizophrenia and substance use disorders) and their place in the treatment algorithm, with a focus on the elderly 2) Practice exercises with the devices 3)General Discussion about strengths, weaknesses and gaps in adult as well as elderly population The goals of this course are to: 1) Review recent non-invasive brain stimulation approaches (rTMS and tDCS) for the treatment of psychiatric symptoms and question their relevance in late-life psychiatric disorders. 2) Practice with available brain stimulation devices approved as medical device by health authorities. 3) Discuss the strengths, weaknesses and gaps of the various approaches in each indication
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Live, Section, Ticket Required
Clinical/Therapeutic
Date
Sun, 11.04.2021
Session Time
15:30 - 17:00
Room
Channel 7
Session Description
The Live Q&A of this session will take place in the Live Sessions auditorium. Please refer to the interactive programme for the exact time and channel.

Proposed by the EPA Section on Psychotherapy -This symposium will present current knowledge, development and clinical experiences on internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy (ICBT) developed in various settings and countries. Presentations include a description of the journey towards national implementation of ICBT and its outcomes in Sweden (MK), of individually tailored ICBT with different modes of delivery and different degrees of therapist support. Moreover, a presentation by VK include Adaptive Treatment Strategies, where a wide range of data before and during treatment are processed by an AI-driven clinical decision support tool guiding the adaption of therapist-guided ICBT at the individual level. Another presentation (KM) will describe the implementation of a national ICBT clinic in Denmark, from the first initial steps through to becoming a national service. Current evidence of effectiveness and implementation efforts conducted at the clinic. JB will report on a pilot study comparing online versus face-to-face transdiagnostic therapy in Arabic-speaking refugees. She will describe the different aspects of tailoring treatment contents in these two settings and discuss potential advantages of a tailored approach for the specific patient population.

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Pre-Recorded with Live Q&A, Section
EPA Course
Date
Mon, 12.04.2021
Session Time
17:30 - 19:30
Room
Courses Hall A
Session Description
Proposed by the EPA Section on Tele Mental Health - Psychiatry is being highly benefited from the possibilities enabled by globalization and the digital world to conduct valuable international research. Researchers can set up diverse teams coordinated in real-time and easily design different studies and interventions to be applied globally. Moreover, the current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the value and need for such collaborations. This course aims at providing the audience with practical methods, tools, and skills for conducting internet-based international research, harnessing the growing expertise of a group of young European psychiatrists. The faculty will be available to assist each of the attendees before, during and after the course, and will be providing additional handouts, references, templates, written guidelines, and video tutorials. This activity is meant to be eminently practical and interactive, combining presentations with discussions of examples of work from the faculty and supervised individual and group exercises. The contents will include the introduction of skills, tips, and free tools for designing research proposals, team coordination, international surveys, systematic reviews, reference managing, analysis of social media contents, manuscript writing and publishing, and science dissemination, among other topics. The course would welcome any mental health practitioner/researcher. It will not necessarily require experience in the methods and tools to be presented and will be further tailored to the actual audience. It may be of particular use for early-career psychiatrists and trainees. This course aligns with the conference general theme and is a joint proposal of the EPA Scientific Section of TeleMental Health and the Early Career Psychiatrists Committee.
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Live, Section, Ticket Required, Sessions with Voting
EPA Course
Date
Sat, 10.04.2021
Session Time
16:30 - 18:30
Room
Courses Hall B
Session Description
Proposed by the EPA Section on Forensic Psychiatry - The course will provide the knowledge and research results about the risk of psychiatric patients of becoming violent and of becoming offenders with violent crimes. It will focus on the indicators of risk for violence and delinquency but also on the indicators of immediate threat and imminent aggression on wards and in outpatient settings. It will teach on how to develop a structure in the assessment and to come to a professional judgment on the severity and on the imminence of risk. It will also teach on risk formulation and risk communication among staff and outside of the clinicians' surroundings (relatives, police, courts, caretakers).It will address risk management, when to intervene and how, the methods of prevention and the long term guidance of risky patients.
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Live, Section, Ticket Required
Clinical/Therapeutic
Date
Mon, 12.04.2021
Session Time
08:00 - 09:30
Room
Channel 3
Session Description
Proposed by the EPA section on Eating Disorders -Anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN) are severe eating disorders (ED) with potential life threatening complications. Although the efficacy of treatments varies among studies, a recovery average of 30% of ED patients is acknowledged. In addition, high rates of drop-out and relapse contribute to a low efficiency of available treatments. Therefore, there is a need to improve the knowledge of the pathophysiology of these disorders in order to identify possible treatment targets and propose more accurate therapeutic interventions. The aim of this symposium is to illustrate new advances in the pathophysiology of EDs, which might provide a theoretical pathogenetic link between alterations in specific brain and/or peripheral systems and ED psychopathology in order to suggest new perspectives for prevention and/or treatment of AN and BN. To this purpose, Prof. F. Fernandez-Aranda (Barcelona, Spain) will discuss personality, cognitive and neurobiological markers associated with therapy response in EDs. Prof. Valdo Ricca (Florence, Italy,) will present the role of the reward system in EDs. Prof. Milos Gabriella (Zurich, Switzerland) will illustrate the role of hypoleptinemia in anorexia nervosa and will present the first experiences with off-label treatment with metreleptin, a leptin analogue. Dr. Philibert Duriez (Paris, France) will analyze factors that drives the increase of insight of patients treated for EDs.
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Live, Section
Educational
Date
Mon, 12.04.2021
Session Time
10:00 - 11:30
Room
Channel 5
Session Description
The Live Q&A of this session will take place in the Live Sessions auditorium. Please refer to the interactive programme for the exact time and channel.

Proposed by the EPA section on Women, Gender and Mental Health - Gender can significantly impact on the course of infection during a pandemic, but also it’s longterm sequelae. In the case of COVID-19, current worldwide statistics show more men than women dying of acute infection, while women are projected to suffer more than men from the health, economic and social consequences of the pandemic. Up to date research findings will be presented by the first speaker. Several studies to date have reported an increase in common mental health problems during the acute phase of the Covid-19 pandemic in all population groups with a more pronounced rise in women. Longer-term effects on mental health in people who have suffered from Covid-19 are as yet unknown. The second speaker will focus on the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder in this group, reviewing up-to-date literature and presenting data from her research group on men and women who were treated as inpatients or at home. The third speaker will discuss evidence that domestic violence and related deaths of women increased during the Covid-19 lockdown periods. The barriers that social restrictions create towards identifying and supporting victims will be discussed and recommendations given to overcome them. Particularly difficult challenges are also encountered during a pandemic by mental health services which care for women with severe mental illness who are pregnant or have recently given birth. The 4th and 5th speaker will discuss which strategies that were rapidly adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic to meet these challenges in the inpatient, community and liaison setting, were successful.

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Pre-Recorded with Live Q&A, Section
EPA Course
Date
Tue, 13.04.2021
Session Time
08:00 - 10:00
Room
Courses Hall A
Session Description
Proposed by the EPA Section on Addictive Behaviours - Motivational interviewing is defined as a patient-centered and collaborative approach that guides people to initiate and maintain a strategy of behaviour change through the resolution of their ambivalence. This approach has become in the last decades the golden standard to manage addictions as opposed to classic confrontational models. Different meta-analysis, have demonstrated its moderate but robust effect in improving both adherence to treatment and addictive behaviours. Brief interventions have proven its efficacy in primary health settings, to help patients reduce their drug use, specially concerning alcohol and tobacco. Motivational adaptations of those brief counselling interventions have been developed and tested in recent years. In this course, attendees will receive training on how to use brief motivational interventions (BMI) with patients suffering addictive disorders in the Emergency Room. The course will address the following topics: •How to identify which clinical situations are, and are not, suitable for a brief intervention •Key elements of a successful brief motivational intervention •Barriers (and how to overcome them) to deliver BMI in the Emergency Room •Elements that influence adherence to treatment and successful referral •Review of the existing scientific evidence The course will be very interactive. Videos, group dynamics, and role playing techniques will be used. At the end of the course, trainees should be able to: •Identify when a BMI is suitable •Know the theoretical principles of BMI •Be able to deliver consistent BMI to patients in need •Understand key elements for a successful referral
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Live, Section, Ticket Required, Sessions with Voting
Date
Sun, 11.04.2021
Session Time
10:00 - 11:30
Room
Channel 4
Session Description
The Live Q&A of this session will take place in the Live Sessions auditorium. Please refer to the interactive programme for the exact time and channel.

Proposed by the EPA section on Neuroimaging -One of the major limitations of current therapeutic management of psychoses is the lack of predictive, personalised medicine tools that could inform clinicians’ as choice of treatment for individual patients, aiming to improve functional outcomes while preventing adverse metabolic side effects (e.g., weight gain, metabolic syndrome, diabetes). In current clinical practice, poor efficacy or adverse side effects of treatments can present months after commencement of treatment. Even if therapy is adjusted, it might already be too late for the patient to fully recover from such comorbidity. Therefore, prompt identification of a patient’s risk profile is essential for selecting an optimal preventative therapeutic strategy. In a personalised medicine approach to disease treatment and prevention of comorbidities, a patient would first undergo a comprehensive screening by a range of diagnostic tools, which would predict the patient’s mental, functional and somatic outcomes given various lines of treatment, and thus help identify the optimal treatment strategy. Recent research using molecular profiling approaches (such as metabolomics) and neuroimaging suggests that such prediction of patient outcomes, even in individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis, may be feasible. The aim of this Symposium is to cover recent advances in the domain of outcome prediction, with specific focus on use of high-dimensional and multi-modal data such as from ‘omics’ and neuroimaging.

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Pre-Recorded with Live Q&A, Section
Date
Sun, 11.04.2021
Session Time
15:30 - 17:00
Room
Channel 4
Session Description
The Live Q&A of this session will take place in the Live Sessions auditorium. Please refer to the interactive programme for the exact time and channel.

Proposed by the EPA Section on Neuroimaging -Converging evidence suggests that patients with major psychoses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression suffer from deficits in brain anatomy and neurocognitive functioning. Also, enhancing neuroprotective mechanisms and anti-inflammation mediators has recently been shown to be beneficial in these disorders. In this context we will present findings from proof of concept studies with aspirin and N-acetyl aspartate in the treatment of depression in bipolar disorder patients. The potential neuroprotective role of long-term antipsychotic therapy on brain anatomy and myelination in psychotic patients will also be debated. Moreover, we will show distinct and shared contributions of diagnosis and symptoms to neurocognition in severe mental illness in the Paisa population in Colombia. In particular, Bipolar-I and schizophrenia displayed nearly identical impairments in accuracy and speed, across cognitive domains, whereas bipolar-II and major depressive disorder performed similarly to controls, with subtle deficits in executive and social cognition. Finally, we will describe the impact of specific hippocampal subfields on negative symptoms and verbal learning in first-episode and drug-naïve schizophrenia patients. This symposium will be extremely innovative, trying to disentangle the complex inter-relationships between treatment, neuroanatomy, psychopathology and cognition in major psychoses, with the long-term goal of improving response in this patient group along with their quality of life. Finally, the data presented in this symposium we will also be crucial for testing novel interventions in this important area of drug development for the treatment of schizophrenia bipolar disorders, and major depression.

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Pre-Recorded with Live Q&A, Section