UPDATE
SEPTEMBER 12, 2025
We are pleased to confirm that the Board of the Canadian Psychiatric Association has approved the proposed formation of a new CPA Section on Arts and Psychiatry. Members of the Department who are also CPA members are still very welcome to join the over 20 UBC Psychiatry Residents and Faculty who are now members of the Section.
If you would like to join, please email: Harry.Karlinsky@ubc.ca and include your name, affiliation, and confirmation of CPA membership status. We especially welcome interest from psychiatry residents and medical students.
CALL FOR FOUNDING MEMBERS
JULY 7, 2025
Dear Faculty, Students, and Residents,
We invite CPA members with an interest in the creative side of psychiatry to join us in forming a new CPA Section on Arts and Psychiatry. In this context, the term “Arts” is used to reference a wide range of disciplines that involve imaginative, expressive or aesthetic creation and that encompass the following categories: the literary arts, the performing arts (such as theatre, dance, and music), the visual arts (such as painting, sculpture, and photography), the cinematic arts, and the digital arts.
What the Section will do
The proposed Terms of Reference are as follows:
- To foster integration of the arts into psychiatric education, training, and clinical practice.
- To explore how the arts can encourage and enhance empathy, reflection, narrative competence and diagnostic acumen.
- To promote initiatives that involve collaboration between professionals in the arts and psychiatrists
- To curate relevant arts-related sessions at the CPA Annual Meeting (such as film screenings, literary readings, and panel discussions)
- To advise the CPA on issues related to the arts and psychiatry, such as how the arts inform education, practice, and public engagement.
Next Steps
To formally launch the section, we need at least 50 CPA members to express support and interest. If you’d like to join as a founding member (no obligation to take on a leadership role), please email: Harry.Karlinsky@ubc.ca and include your name, affiliation, and confirmation of CPA membership status. We especially welcome interest from psychiatry residents and medical students who are members of the CPA.
Sincerely,
Dr. Harry Karlinsky
Clinical Professor, UBC Department of Psychiatry
Series Director, Frames of Mind, presented by The Cinematheque and the Institute of Mental Health, UBC Department of Psychiatry.
UBC’s campuses and learning sites are situated within the traditional territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil- Waututh) Nations and in the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan Nation and their peoples.