Psych Congress 2021: What to Expect With Dr Raison

Psych Congress 2021 Co-Chair, Charles Raison, MD, Mary Sue and Mike Shannon Chair for Healthy Minds, Children, and Families, Madison, Wisconson, welcomes attendees and shares some upcoming highlights of the conference.

Dr Raison, who is also a professor in the School of Human Ecology and the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be leading a number of sessions including "Live - The Body Decides: An Update on the Immunology of Stress and Depression" to be held Sunday, October 31, 2021 at 4:45pm CST.

The in-person conference is being held from October 29-November 1, 2021 in San Antonio, Texas. View the full agenda or sign up to attend virtually here.

Read the transcript:

Hi, I'm Chuck Raison. I'm one of the co-chairs for this year's Psych Congress. I thought I would give you all a welcome message here virtually. I am so excited for this year's Psych Congress. I've been a chair, a co-chair of this event now for a number of years. I don't think I've ever been happier to be coming back to these wonderful in-person meetings.

San Antonio personally happens to be my favorite place for these meetings. I think you'll find that it's a wonderful city. When you're having a little time off to explore the River Walk and end up at the old Pearl Brewery. They're beautiful, beautiful urban redevelopment projects. It's a great location.

What I'm really excited about is the content of this meeting. If you look at the agenda, for somebody like me who spent years in psychiatry and knows a lot of the famous people in the field, the first thing that strikes me about the agenda, frankly, is the fact that we have so many of the leaders in this field speaking at this event.

It's a who's who of such a wide range of psychiatry. That makes such a difference. It's so important to hear from people that have actually done the work upon which we base our field. The people that have done the seminal studies. Many of them are here talking about areas that they were pioneers in.

Then the breadth of topics that are covered is also something that I find perpetually remarkable. This is a feature of Psych Congress that is apparent every year, but it's really on display this year.

We have topics ranging from cutting-edge ways of using currently available pharmacologic treatments, to discussions about the frontier of things that are rapidly coming towards us in psychiatry. Things like psychedelics, things like how to optimize treatment with ketamine.

Then we have pragmatic things. We have some interesting lectures on technology. We have lectures about what to do about technology addiction. What do we do about people, hate to admit it, a little bit like me, that tend to get hooked on your smartphone even when you know it's probably not an optimal way to live your life?

We also have interesting talks on how to harness technology for psychotherapeutic purposes. How to optimize and explore telehealth, for example, which has become something that has obviously exploded in the last couple years due to COVID.

Speaking of COVID, we have a couple of sessions talking about the mental health ravages that have been inflicted upon the American society by COVID. We have a fantastic pre-conference day, taking a deep dive into psychopharmacology, deep dive into pediatric psychiatry.

The other thing that I always look forward to, and it seems especially engaging this year, are the special sessions that we have in the evening after we have been spending our days down more in the weeds of learning.

We have some great special sections this year. Ashley Brown is with us, a member of the Jackson family, who's going to talk openly about her struggles and successes with bipolar disorder. Something I'm especially interested in. We're going to have the author of the book on "Hidden Valley Road" about the family, where half the family had schizophrenia. We're going to have a family member.

This is such an interesting thing because it was from this family with that high genetic loading that researchers at National Institute of Mental Health began to make some real inroads into the genetic architecture of schizophrenia. We have a great comedy improv session one of the nights.

All in, it's going to be an amazing event. Something else which is interesting. I have co-chaired or chaired this event off and on for about 10 years now.

One of the things that is striking to all of us that are on the steering committee is how over time, we have managed to really develop a program that not only is so inclusive of its topics, but also is presented by people that are great speakers.

We go from room to room and we introduce people during the Psych Congress. Something we said the last time we were in-person, and it's even truer this year, I think, is that all the speakers are great. They're entertaining, they're spot on, they're great teachers. It's such a pleasure to listen to the folks that are going to be teaching us at Psych Congress.

So, for those of you that are coming to the pre-conference day, you'll see me with my longtime colleague and buddy, Dr Vlad Maletic, emceeing the day on psychopharmacology. You will see me welcoming you all on first morning of the event, along with other steering committee members.

You will see me wandering around. Please come up, say, "Hi." Talk to us.

Shameless self-plug, I am doing a talk on inflammation on Sunday. There's been a lot of development in this field. It's really, really interesting. We're going to talk about how to think about inflammatory processes in ways that actually have practical therapeutic implications.

I invite you to join me for that. Again, in summary, welcome. Can't wait to see you. Can't wait to be in San Antonio. It's going to be a great meeting. We'll see you shortly.

Charles Raison, MD, is the Mary Sue and Mike Shannon Distinguished Chair for Healthy Minds, Children & Families and Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr Raison also serves as Director of Clinical and Translational Research for Usona Institute and as Director of Research on Spiritual Health for Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, GA. In addition, Dr Raison has served as a mental health expert for CNN.com for many years. Dr Raison is internationally recognized for his studies examining novel mechanisms involved in the development and treatment of major depression and other stress-related emotional and physical conditions, as well as for his work examining the physical and behavioral effects of compassion training.