Welcome to the 21st WCP Virtual Congress Program Scheduling

At this time, the death toll from COVID-19 is approaching 3 million people worldwide. The full toll of COVID-19 far exceeds even this sobering number. Beyond the direct biological impacts of an infectious disease, the global impact of COVID-19 is revealing and magnifying pre-existing fractures in our social structures. COVID-19 has led to significant differential impacts among groups across age, health and socio-cultural variables, whether through increased direct illness morbidity and mortality in the elderly or those with mental illness, or through indirect impacts associated with widespread societal and health system changes, including youth impacted by confinement and social isolation impinging on development of prosocial skills, increased caregiver and family stresses ranging from financial distress to violence, and further disenfranchisement of already marginalized and vulnerable groups. At the same time, heightened public awareness and outcry about such disparities has the potential to fuel new alliances, challenging and perhaps dismantling some historical stereotypes of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability and illness. Rather than a pandemic, the global impacts reveal a syndemic – multiple pandemics along different lines, both the viral/biological pandemic, plus a social pandemic superimposed on pre-existing fault lines of inequity, poverty, mental illness, racism, sexism, ableism, ageism and other forms of stigma and discrimination. This session will include discussion of the varied impacts of COVID-19 and exploration of their root causes from a social psychiatry perspective.