Welcome to the 22nd WCP Congress Program Scheduling

This symposium is organized by the WPA-Section on Psychiatric Rehabilitation. Psychiatric rehabilitation is one of the key components for people with serious mental illness. Kamonnet Wannasewok will present an overview on the employment situation among persons with schizophrenia in Bangkok, Thailand, based on a survey to explore employment rate and perceived barriers to employment for persons with schizophrenia. This information will be useful for the mental health service providers and policy planners to awareness of the importance of developing suitable vocational rehabilitation programs. Medhat Elsabbahy will introduce a Day Care Rehabilitative program in Abu Dhabi providing a structured program. It increases the vocational skills of these patients, as part of the attempt to make this usually marginalized persons more active and productive. An initiative to provide real life vocational training for these patients recently started. Alberto Fergusson will report how during the past 20 years a mutual recovery approach was developed in Colombia. It turned out that accompanying others with a somehow shared condition to recover, was one of the best ways to recover. It was gradually understood that this was also true in the case of therapists. The recovery process was triggered only if and when the therapist was willing and able to change. Johannes Wancata will present data from a national population survey on the prevalence of sick leaves, unemployment and early retirement among mentally well and mentally ill people. It turned out that persons with mental disorders had an increased risk for difficulties in their job.