17-19 March 2008, Leiden, the Netherlands 

leading professionals in the field as keynote speakers

Alan Apter	John Peteet
Arjan Braam	Herman M. van Praag
Marc Galanter	Ahmad Mohit
Gerrit Glas	Andrew Sims
Michael King	Moshe H. Spero
Harold J.G.M. van Megen	Patrick Vandermeersch
Hanneke Muthert	Peter J. Verhagen

 

ALAN APTER, MD, PhD

Alan Apter is director, Child and Adolescent Division, Schneider Childrens Medical Center of Israel, 1999 - present; Chairman, Dept of Psychiatry, Sackler School of Medicine, University of Tel Aviv, 1996-1996; Director, Child and Adolescent Division, Geha Psychiatric Hospital, 1995-1999; Visiting Professor, Yale School of Medicine, Child Study Center, 1994-1996; Director, Child and Adolescent Division, Geha Psychiatric Hospital, 1992-1993; Director, Adolescent Unit, Geha Psychiatric Hospital, 1990-1998; Chairman, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, 1990-1990.

Professional Memberships:
Advisory Council for Swedish National Center for Suicide Research and Prevention of Mental Health, 2000; Official Consultant to the IDF on Suicide Prevention, 1993; Syllabus committee in Child Psychiatry, Scientific Council of the Israel Medical Association, 1993; Member, Board of Examiners Executive Committee in General Psychiatry, Israel Ministry of Health, 1992; Committee for the Prevention of Suicide. Department of Defense, 1991; Ministry of Health Committee on Licensing of firearms for the mentally ill, 1990; Committee for Child Placement Laws. Department of Social Welfare, 1986; Examination Committee for Child Psychiatry, Scientific Council of the Israel Medical Association, 1986; Board of Examiners in Child Psychiatry, Scientific Council of the Israel Medical Association, 1985; Board of Examiners in General Psychiatry, Ministry of Health, 1985; Curriculum Committee, Department of Psychiatry, Tel-Aviv University Medical School, 1983; Education Committee, Department of Psychiatry, Tel- Aviv University Medical School, 1982.

Research interests:
- Adolescent suicide
- Adolescent psychiatry

Title of his lecture: Religious factors affecting suicide. abstract

 

ARJAN BRAAM, MD, PhD

Arjan W. Braam (1969) is consultant psychiatrist in Altrecht Mental Health Care, Department of Emergency Psychiatry, Utrecht, the Netherlands, and senior researcher in the Institute of Extramural Medicine (EMGO-Institute) at the VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Since 1992, he is a researcher in the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA), a gerontological and epidemiological prospective research initiative. His work consists of empirical studies in the field of religion and mental health, and depression in later life in particular, with an emphasis of identifying both adaptive and maladaptive aspects of religiousness in a secularising society.

Title of his lecture: God image in older adults in The Netherlands: recent research findings. abstract

 

MARC GALANTER, MD, PhD

Marc Galanter M.D. is Professor of Psychiatry at NYU, Founding Director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at NYU, and Director of the NYU Fellowship Training Program in Addiction Psychiatry.  He is also a Division Director at NYU’s World Health Organization Collaborating Center, and Director of its national Center for Medical Fellowships in Alcoholism and Drug Abuse.  He is Editor of the journal "Substance Abuse," the annual book series “Recent Developments in Alcoholism,” and author of the books, "Network Therapy for Alcohol and Drug Abuse" and “Spirituality and the Healthy Mind: Science, Therapy and the Need for Personal Meaning.”  His NIH and foundation-funded studies have addressed family therapy for substance abuse, pharmacologic treatment for addiction, self-help treatment for substance abusers, and spiritually-oriented recovery. 

Dr. Galanter attended Albert Einstein College of Medicine where he did his residency in psychiatry.  After that he was a Clinical Associate at the National Institute of Mental Health, and then an NIH Career Teacher.  He later served as President of the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse (AMERSA) (1976-1977), the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (1991-1992), and the American Society of Addiction Medicine (1999-2001).  Among his awards are the Gold Achievement Award for innovation in clinical care and the Seymour Vestermark Award for Psychiatric Education, both from the American Psychiatric Association, the McGovern Award for medical teaching from AMERSA, and New York State’s Award for Psychiatric Research. See www.med.nyu.edu/spirituality.

Title of his lecture: Cults: Faith, healing, and coercion. abstract

 

GERRIT GLAS, MD, PhD

Gerrit Glas is psychiatrist and philosopher. He has two chairs: ‘Philosophical Aspects of Psychiatry’ (Leiden University Medical Centre) and ‘Christian Philosophy from a Reformed Perspective’ (Faculty of Philosophy, Leiden University) in Leiden, The Netherlands. He is also director of residency training in Zwolse Poort (Zwolle, NL). His main topics of interest are anxiety and anxiety disorders; philosophy of neuroscience; philosophical aspects of human nature in the light of the life sciences; the concept of personal identity; epistemological aspects of diagnosis, classification and the concept of disorder; and psychiatry and religion. He wrote around 120 scholarly papers, articles and chapters. Many of them can be found at the digital repository of Leiden University (www.openaccess.leidenuniv.nl).  He is also author and/or editor of 7 books. He is editor of G. Glas, M.H. Spero, P.J. Verhagen & H.M. van Praag, Hearing Visions and Seeing Voices. Psychological Aspects of Biblical Concepts and Personalities (Dordrecht: Springer/Kluwer Academic Press, 2007). He is editor in chief of Psyche en Geloof (Psyche and Faith), a Dutch scientific journal in the area of religion, psychiatry, and psychology. He is also editor of a (Dutch) book series on Psychiatry and Philosophy at BOOM (Amsterdam).

Title of his lecture: Religious psychopathology as a challenge to the concept of disease. abstract

 

MICHAEL KING, MD, PhD, FRCP, FRCGP, FRCPsych

Michael King completed his medical studies in New Zealand before coming to the United Kingdom to undertake a vocational training in general practice at the Hammersmith Hospital. He then moved to the Maudsley Hospital to train in psychiatry and later trained in psychiatric epidemiology at the General Practice Research Unit under the leadership of the late Professor Michael Shepherd. Thus, much of his research focuses on primary mental health care. He is interested in how GPs recognise and manage mental health problems and the epidemiology of such problems in primary care populations. He has particular expertise in the methodology of randomised trials of complex interventions in primary and secondary care. He also has research and clinical interests in cognitive behaviour therapy and in sexual medicine. read more >>>

Title of his lecture: Defining and measuring spirituality. abstract

 

HAROLD J.G.M. VAN MEGEN, MD, PhD

Harold van Megen is psychiatrist and director of residency training in Meerkanten GGZ (Ermelo, NL). His main topics of interest are anxiety and anxiety disorders, especially the obsessive-compulsive disorder. He is author and (co)editor of scholarly papers, articles and book chapters.

Title of his lecture: Religious socialization as a variable in psychotherapeutic treatment. abstract

 

AHMAD MOHIT, MD, PhD

Ahmad Mohit (1943) did his primary and secondary school education and moved to Tehran where he finished high school education and later entered into the Tehran Medical University as a medical student. He earned his MD degree in 1968. He later moved to the United States to pursue his residency in the field of psychiatry in Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. After passing the US Psychiatric Board exam in 1978, he returned to Iran and established the Tehran Institute of Psychiatry where he worked until 1992 as the Chairman of Psychiatric group of Iran Medical University.  Among his major achievements in this period are organization of numerous educational seminars and workshops in psychology and psychiatric studies and also the establishment of Iran mental health network which gained world wide attention in the past decade. In 1992, Dr. Mohit was invited by World Health Organization to work as the East Mediterranean Regional Advisor of Mental Health in Alexandria, Egypt. After 10 years of working in this position, he recently was promoted as the Director Health Protection and Promotion. read more >>> 

Title of his lecture: The Need for Psychiatry of the Whole Person. "Spirituality and Mental Health”. abstract

 

HANNEKE MUTHERT, PhD

Hanneke Muthert (1973), theologian, is a teacher at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands (the Master Spiritual Care), and spiritual caregiver at the Drenthe Mental Health Trust in the Netherlands. Her recent work focuses on grief and mourning processes in schizophrenia and how these processes relate to the construction of (religious) meaning making. Other topics of recent interest are life and work of W.R. Bion; the education of mental health practitioners on existential themes in psychiatry related to their own philosophies of life; the role of spiritual caregivers in psychiatry.

Title of her lecture: Coming to terms with losses in schizophrenia: the search for meaning. abstract

 

JOHN PETEET, MD, PhD

After receiving his MD degree at Columbia and a medical internship at UNC in Chapel Hill, John Peteet trained in psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, and completed a fellowship at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, in Boston. For over 25 years he has served as a psychiatrist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Board certified in psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine, he has received awards for teaching and has published numerous papers in the areas of psychosocial oncology, addiction, and the clinical interface between spirituality/religion and psychiatry. In 2004 the American Psychiatric Association Press published his book Doing the Right Thing: An Approach to Moral Issues in Mental Health Treatment, and another that he co-edited, the Handbook of Spirituality and World View in Clinical Practice. He is writing a book on the spiritual dimension of depression, and currently chairs the American Psychiatric Association’s Corresponding Committee on Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry.

Title of his lecture: Religiosity, Spirituality, and Depression: The Issue of the Boundaries. abstract

 

HERMAN M. VAN PRAAG, MD, PhD

Prof. Van Praag established the frist department of biological Psychiatry in Europe (Groningen, the Netherlands) and became the first European Professor of Biological Psychiatry in 1968. Subsequently be became head and professor of psychiatry at the University of Groningen, Utrecht, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York (USA) and the University of Maastricht. He is the author or editor of numerous books. He is the author or co-author of numerous articles and book chapters. He also wrote on the topic of religion and psychiatry (e.g. Psychiatry and Religion. An unconsummated marriage, 2007). read more >>>

Prof van Praag appointed to be honorary member of the ECNP. read more >>>

Title of his lecture:  About the borders between normal and abnormal religiosity. abstract

 

ANDREW C.P. SIMS, MA, MD, FRCPsych, FRCP

Andrew Sims is emeritus professor of psychiatry, University of Leeds, UK. He is a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK). He is the well known author of 'Symptoms in the Mind. An Introduction to Descriptive Psychopathology' (3th edition 2003 Saunders).

Title of his lecture: Religious psychopathology: incidence, phenomenology & epidemiology. abstract

 

MOSHE H. SPERO, PhD

Title of his opening lecture: Peering through the Cleft in the Rock: Countertransference and the Representation of God in the Context of Psychoanalysis. abstract 

 

PATRICK VANDERMEERSCH, PhD

Patrick Vandermeersch (1946) is full Professor of Psychology of Religion at the Faculty of Theology an Religious Studies of the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). Among his research interest is the complex nature of religious experience, whereby he attempts to disentangle the noetic content of belief and the distinct emotional layers in faith. Recently he has published La chair de la Passion. Une histoire de foi: la flagellation, (Passages) Paris, Cerf, 2002 and (together with H. Westerink), Godsdienstpsychologie in cultuurhistorisch perspectief [Psychology of Religion considered as an Element of the History of Culture], Amsterdam, Boom, 2007.  read more >>>

Title of his lecture: Mystical Experience and Psychosis. A historical and systematic reflection on a often assumed affinity. abstract

 

PETER J. VERHAGEN, MD

Peter Verhagen (1957) is psychiatrist, group psychotherapist, supervising therapist, and theologian. He is on the editorial board of Psyche & Geloof (Psyche and Faith), a Dutch scientific journal in the area of religion, psychiatry, and psychology, and of Groepen (Groups), the Dutch journal of group dynamics and group psychotherapy. He is secretary of the WPA (World Psychiatric Association) Section on Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry. He is secretary of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) Section on Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry.

Title of his lecture: Soul and Self, Pastor and Psychiatrist: a multilevel interdisciplinary and relational paradigm. abstract