The 18th Annual Pacific Psychopharmacology Conference, organized by the UBC Department of Psychiatry and UBC CPD, took place in downtown Vancouver on September 19th and 20th, 2024. The format was truly hybrid with some presenters and some attendees participating remotely. On Thursday afternoon, a total of 178 practitioners spent the afternoon learning from local experts about ADHD across the life cycle. On Friday, 192 attendees were on site at the Pinnacle Hotel Harbourfront, and 193 attended virtually.
Derek Thompson, Director, Indigenous Engagement for the UBC Faculty of Medicine, provided remarks for the conferees and speakers to open the meeting in advance of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Highlights of the day’s plenary sessions included Professor Stefan Leucht‘s presentation on recent meta-analytic studies in psychiatry. Professor Leucht, of the Technical University of Munich in Germany, is a world leader in such investigations, and he gave an intimate session in the afternoon for clinicians on understanding methods of meta-analysis. Dr. Andrea Iaboni from the University of Toronto provided updates in a plenary session on the Canadian guidelines for managing anxiety in older adults.
Other speakers included Dr. David Taylor of the Maudsley Hospital in London, UK, Dr. Benjamin Goldstein from CAMH in Toronto, and Dr. David Crockford from the University of Calgary. The conference has a goal of including high-quality speakers, both international and local, who can address important clinical topics across the spectrum of ages and disorders. Perspectives from people with lived experience have been included in recent years. The conference committee is co-chaired by Randall F. White and Reza Rafizadeh and includes Nick Mathew, Katelyn Halpape, Jackie Siu and William Mak. The committee is very grateful to the organizational and on-the-ground support from UBC CPD including conference director Lindsay Callan and manager Michelle Baysan.
Next year’s conference will be in September. Look for the announcement of the exact date in early 2025.