The resilience process received much interest in mental health, where you gain from negative experience instead of getting worst. The concept has now broaden to encompass all aspects of positively dealing with stressful situations. We all had a vivid and concrete experience with COVID-19 and associated seclusions, but patients with mental disorders were especially at stake for many reasons. The first speaker, Pr Andrea Fiorillo, the EPA treasurer, will describe how the Italian population managed, and how efficiently some subjects were able to cope. Stress is also part of life, especially of work life. Working in the field of mental health is very rewarding because of the importance of the demand and the pleasure to help those that need it most, but this work is also associated with negative aspects such as frustration and grief. The president of EFPA will share with us why wellbeing in mental health workforce matters and how to develop it. Childhood trauma is much more invasive and deleterious source of stress, frequently constituting the ground for later mental health diseases. But once again, if detected early, and if efforts are really invested in prevention strategies, Doctor Eleni Karayianni will demonstrate that resilience is not only possible but also feasible. Because psychiatry is at the border of so many aspects, it is important to understand how our genes are involved in such resilience process. In this regard, we will have a nice example developped by Doctor Boris Chaumette of how our genetic material explains why some ultra-high risk patients switch, or do not switch to schizophrenia.

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. This symposium encompasses presentations of surveys led by the European Psychiatric Association Early Career Psychiatrists Committee (EPA-ECPC) and the European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT). Tomasz Gondek and Asilay Seker will discuss the final 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.