The current diagnostic systems are subjected to continuing revision processes in order to adequately describe the complexity of mental disorders. During this process, some disorders have been progressively “forgotten” and are understudied by the younger generation of psychiatrists. Among the several reasons behind this process, there is the tendency of modern classification systems to improve the clinical utility of diagnostic categories, although reducing their validity. Furthermore, the reductionistic approach adopted by the modern classification systems has eliminated the capacity of detecting the subtle clinical differences among different patients, even when affected by the same disorder. However, the need for young generation of psychiatrists to re-discover the roots of psychopathology and the classical European tradition has been recently claimed. In this workshop, the speakers will discuss certain classical syndromes which are rarely addressed in the current educational curricula. In particular, de Clerambault, Cotard and Capgras syndromes will be presented, together with kleptomania and pyromania. The relevance of these syndromes for the clinical routine practice as well as the forensic implications will be extensively discussed.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an important impact on mental healthcare worldwide. This led to a change in the daily life and working conditions for many psychiatrist and psychiatric trainees. Next to the implementation of the rules on social distancing and teleconsultations, the COVID-19 pandemic required adaptations to psychiatric education practices. Since the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to an increase in mental health problems, an adequate psychiatric training is of the utmost importance. In this symposium we discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychiatric education across Europe. We touch upon different aspects of psychiatric education, from psychiatric training, over early career psychiatrists to continuous medical education (CME). By demonstrating the encountered challenges and opportunities, we hope to contribute to the improvement of psychiatric education in the future. This symposium encompasses four presentations of surveys led by several organisations working on psychiatric training across Europe: the European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT), the European Psychiatric Association Early Career Psychiatrists Committee (EPA-ECPC) and the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS)- Section of Psychiatry. First, Anne Nobels presents the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychiatric training, as indicated by over 40 country representatives in the EFPT country surveys. Second, Tomasz Gondek and Asilay Seker introduce the results of an EPA-ECPC and EFPT led questionnaire among early career psychiatrists taking both the General Adult Psychiatry and Child & Adolescent Psychiatry perspective on COVID-19 into account. Finally, Marisa Casanova Dias presents the UEMS viewpoint on the impact of COVID-19 on CME.