RCPsych Wales January Update

As we welcome in the New Year, we are looking forward to many more conferences and projects.

Building upon a successful 2019, a particular highlight of which was the Faculty of Old Age Psychiatry conference held at Big Pit National Coal Museum in Blaenavon, we are in the process of kicking off the year with many more events.

The Whole School Approach conference, run jointly with the Welsh Government, saw an engaging debate between a number of high schools in and around Cardiff on the topic ‘this house believes that gaming is good for you’. We will be continuing to work with the high school debates project in 2020 as we are keen to engage young people in the discussion of mental health.

Continuing along the vein of working with young people, the College, in conjunction with our resident artist Patrick Jones and Creative Writing lecturer Christina Thatcher, will be offering creative writing workshops to high school pupils exploring issues surrounding mental health. The workshops will be using poetry and pieces of literature to encourage the students to consider their own, and others’, mental states.

We would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate Dr. Maria Atkins, who has been voted in as the new Chair of RCPsych Wales. Dr. Atkins will be taking over from myself in July; we are sure that she will do a wonderful job in leading the College.

2020 is the year in which we will be launching our new strategy, which is based around parity between mental and physical health. The strategy follows on from recent commitments from Welsh Government for joint work in developing perinatal, early intervention psychosis, prison mental health and culturally competent services. Full details of the strategy will be released early in the year.