Speakers

Dr Perugi received his medical degree at the University of Pisa in 1981 and he trained in Psychiatry until 1985. He works as the co-director of the Day-Hospital unit of the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Pisa. Dr Perugi is professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Psychopharmacotherapy at the University of Pisa, Italy. From December 2000, Dr Perugi has been the director of the Institute of Behavioural Sciences "G. Delisio" in Pisa. He is involved in the International Research Project on Mood Disorders in collaboration with the University of South California in San Diego. In this field he has developed and directed many research projects on Mixed States, Mania, Anxious-Bipolar Co-morbidity and Atypical Depression-Bipolar II-Borderline connection. In the field of anxiety disorders he has directed several studies on clinical features and long-term naturalistic treatment of Panic Disorder-Agoraphobia, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Social Phobia. He is part of the editorial board of the Journal of Affective Disorder and other 5 International Journals. He is the author of 3 books and over 350 papers, published in national and international Journals (about 120 peer reviewed), on psychopathology, clinical psychopharmacology, and pharmacotherapy of affective disorders.

He trained under Manfred Bleuler and was Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Head of the Research Department of Zurich University Psychiatric Hospital (the Burghölzli) from 1969 to 1994. He continues to work full-time in epidemiological and clinical research.

His monograph (1966) established and validated the distinction between bipolar disorders, depression, and schizoaffective disorders on the basis of genetics, course, and personality. He was the first to show the unfavourable long-term course of mood disorders.

In 1964 he described the familial response to imipramine; on the basis of multicentre studies, he provided statistical evidence for the long-term efficacy of lithium (1970) and for the efficacy of clozapine (1971). His more recent work in psychopharmacology has focused on the long-term prophylactic effect of antidepressants and atypical neuroleptics against suicide, on the early onset of action of antidepressants, and on "drug-induced hypomania".

His recent main research has been in epidemiology covering the classification, comorbidity and course of mood and anxiety disorders including subdiagnostic syndromes (recurrent brief depression, bipolar-II disorders, hypomania, minor bipolar disorder, and anxiety), OCD, neurasthenia, perimenstrual syndromes and migraine.

He has also studied the relationship of personality with birth order, astrology, blood groups, smoking, drug abuse, suicide, mood disorders, and schizophrenia.

He has received many awards in recognition of his work, including the Anna Monika Awards (1967/1969), Paul Martini Prize for Methodology in Medicine (1969), Otto Naegeli Prize (1983), Eric Strömgren Medal (1987), and the Emil Kraepelin Medal of the Max Planck Institute, Munich (1992). He has also received the Selo Prize NARSAD/Depression Research, USA (1994), Mogens Schou Award for Research in Bipolar Disorder, USA (2001), the Burghölzli Award for Social Psychiatry (2001), the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics (2002), the Wagner-Jauregg Medal (2007), the Juan J. López-Ibor Award (2010) and the WFSBP Lifetime Achievement Award in Biological Psychiatry (2011).

Professor Angst is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He is a Honorary member of the Mexican, Chilean, Polish, and Austrian Psychiatric Associations; the American Psychopathological Association; the German Association of Biological Psychiatrists, the Swiss Society of Psychiatric Epidemiology; the Swiss Society of Biological Psychiatry, the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the Association of European Psychiatrists, of which he was President from 1966 to 1998. In 2002 he was elected as a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

Dr Hantouche is considered a top expert for bipolar disorders and OCD. He is also involved as the scientific advisor of AFTOC (the French Association of Patients with OCD), ARGOS (bipolar patients) and BICYCLE (parents of bipolar children). Currently, Dr Hantouche is the director of CTAH, Anxiety and Mood Center (since 2006). He has published more than 200 papers (66 cited in Pubmed*) and is the author of 10 books on OCD, Cyclothymia, Bipolar OCD, Juvenile bipolarity, Creativity, Psychoeducation for Cyclothymia, Trilogy of fears and phobias. In April 2005,he chaired the 5^th International Experts Meeting for Bipolar Disorders and launched the European Bipolar Forum - He is a reviewer for many international journals.

Prof Akiskal obtained his medical degree (Alpha Omega Alpha) from the American University of Beirut in 1969. Thereafter he settled in the United States and obtained his psychiatric training at the Universities of Tennessee, Memphis and Wisconsin, Madison. He was appointed Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology at the University of Tennessee (1972-1990), and subsequently recruited as the Senior Science Advisor to the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (1990-1994). He is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the International Mood Center at the University of California in San Diego. He holds an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Lisbon. He has been the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Affective Disorders since 1996. Prof Akiskal rose to prominence with his integrative theory of depression (Science, 1973). Subsequently he established chronic depressions as treatable mood disorders. His research on cyclothymia paved the way for understanding the childhood antecedents of bipolarity, and helped in the worldwide renaissance of the temperament field. His focus on subthreshold mood disorders enlarged the boundaries of bipolar disorders. He has received the Gold Medal for Pioneer Research (Society of Biological Psychiatry), the German Anna Monika Prize for Depression, the NARSAD Prize for Affective Disorders, the Jean Delay Prize for international collaborative research (World Psychiatric Association), as well as the French Jules Baillarger and the Italian Aretaeus Prizes for his research on the bipolar spectrum. Professor Akiskal has pioneered the study of outpatient mood disorders. At the University of Tennessee, he established mood clinics which have had worldwide appeal because of his philosophy of conducting clinical training and research while delivering high quality care. His clinical expertise ranges from dysthymia to bipolar spectrum disorders, as well as comorbidity, resistant depression, interface of personality with mood disorders, mixed states, anxious bipolarity, and PTSD. In 2003, he received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor "for exceptional national humanitarian service." He consults and lectures internationally.

He is directly involved in teaching, research, and patient care. He graduated from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas in 1972 and completed a medical internship at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. He completed a research fellowship at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and a Psychiatry residency at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Swann recently completed a term on the National Advisory Council on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse and has served on grant review boards for NIH and the Veterans Administration, where he was Chair of the Merit Review Board on Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences. He is a co-founder, and is president-elect, of the International Society for Research on Impulsivity. Dr. Swann is part of a group that integrates treatment with basic and clinical research in mood disorders. His research support has included the NIMH, NIAAA, and the American Heart Institute. Clinical research focuses on treatment of affective disorders, especially prediction of treatment response and development of more objective measures of disease severity, its underlying behavioral mechanisms, and its change during treatment. Preclinical human research concerns the neurobiology of behavior, such as impulsivity and motivation, which may be basic to bipolar disorder and its most severe complications. Basic research focuses on pharmacological and developmental aspects of behavioral sensitization to stimulants and other potential models for recurrence in affective disorders. His work has resulted in over 250 refereed publications, plus reviews and book chapters. He teaches medical students, residents, graduate students, and other trainees and has been awarded the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence and Residents’ teaching awards.

He was educated at the Conservatorio di Musica di Santa Cecilia, Rome, Italy, the Richard-Strauss-Konservatorium, Munich, Germany and the Medical School, University of Munich, Germany. He was resident in psychiatry at the University of Munich, Germany and was research fellow at the Laboratory of Neuroendocrine Regulation, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, M.I.T., Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Hospital appointments include the University of Munich and the University of Muenster, Germany, where he wrote his habilitation thesis. He was co-founder and secretary of the German Society for Bipolar Disorders. He is currently a member of the Scientific Secretariat of the European Bipolar Forum and of the Verein für Psychiatrie und Neurologie, Vienna. His particular interest is in the diagnosis, neurobiology and therapy of affective disorders.

Prof Figueira's area of scientific research is clinical and experimental psychopathology (bipolar disorders) and clinical psychopharmacology. Prof Figueira has been involved in the organisation of various meetings including the 1997 European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) regional meeting, the 17^th European Congress of Psychiatry that took place in Lisbon 2008 and International Symposia on Bipolar Disorders (1994-2009) since 1997 in cooperation with Hagop Akiskal - Honorary President (Univ. San Diego). Between 1996 and 2005 she was involved as a principal investigator in many pharmacological clinical trials including six phase III studies and four phase II studies. Professor Figueira has been a fellow of the Collegium Internationale Neuro-psychopharmacologicum (CINP) since 1978, the European Association of Psychiatry (EAP) since 2002 and the International Society of Affective Disorders (ISAD) since 2003. She has published over 100 manuscripts in national and international peer-reviewed journals.

He is the first recipient of the Early Career Award from the Division of Child and Adolescent Clinical Psychology, and is an elected member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He has served as the Director of the Data Management and Statistical Analysis Unit and Research Methods Core of the Center for Research in Bipolar Disorder across the Life Cycle. He earned his doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Delaware, and he completed his predoctoral internship training at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic before joining the faculty at Case Western Reserve University. Prof Youngstrom is a licensed psychologist who specializes in the relationship of emotions and psychopathology, and the clinical assessment of children and families. He teaches courses on assessment and therapy, developmental psychopathology, research design, and multivariate statistics, and has earned the Carl F. Wittke, Glennan Fellowship, and the Northeastern Ohio Teaching Awards. He also actively investigates ways of improving the use of clinical assessment instruments for making better differential diagnoses, predictions about future functioning, or monitoring of treatment progress – particularly with regard to bipolar disorder across the lifespan. Prof  Youngstrom has spoken on the topic of pediatric bipolar disorder at scientific meetings in Canada, Europe, South America, and Asia, as well as around the United States. Prof Youngstrom has published more than 130 peer reviewed publications on the topics of clinical assessment and emotion, and he has served as an ad hoc reviewer on more than 40 prominent psychology and psychiatry journals as well as being on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, and Psychological Assessment. Prof Youngstrom is the principal investigator on a five year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH066647) and co-investigator of a second, multi-site R01, both designed to improve the assessment of bipolar disorder in diverse community samples. He has received grants from the NIMH, the Ohio Department of Mental Health, Cuyahoga County, and the Schubert Center for Child Development, and has been principal or co-investigator in funded projects to a value of more than $20 million.

He graduated at the Medical School of the University of Pisa, Italy in 1979 and went on to specialize in Psychiatry, taking his second degree cum laude in 1983. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Department of Psychiatry at the Santa Chiara Hospital of the University of Pisa, Italy. He is Professor of Drug Addiction Medicine at the School of Psychiatry of the Universities of Pisa and Siena. He has been President of the European Opiate Addiction Treatment Association (EUROPAD) since its foundation in Geneva, Switzerland in 1994. As President of EUROPAD he has organized international symposia in the USA during the Conferences of the American Association for the Treatment of Opiate Dependence (AATOD) and Conferences in several European cities (Saint-Tropez, 1995; Lublijana, 1997; Arezzo 2000; Oslo 2002; Paris, 2004; Bratislava, 2006; Sofia, 2008). He received the Dole-Nyswander Award in Washington (DC), USA in 1994 and was the first non-American winner of that award. In 2004 he received the “Chimera Award” in Paris. In 1990 (Cagliari, Italy) he became a founding member of the Società Italiana Tossicodipendenze - Italian Society of Addiction Medicine (SITD-ItSAM), and is currently on its Board of Directors. He is author of the chapters on Drug Abuse and Aggression in the second edition of the Trattato Italiano di Psichiatria. To date he has 500 scientific publications and has given over 300 scientific presentations. He is Editor of Heroin Addiction and Related Clinical Problems, the official journal of EUROPAD, and board member of Journal of Maintenance in the Addictions, Italian Journal on Addictions, Addictive Disorders and their Treatment, and Odvinosky.

Eduard Vieta is Professor of Psychiatry and the Director of the Bipolar Disorders Program of the Hospital Clinic at the University of Barcelona, Spain. He also serves as Director of Research at the Clinical Institute of Neuroscience at the same institution. His research focuses on the neurobiology and treatment of bipolar disorder. His programme examines novel pharmacological and psychological treatments, including atypical antipsychotics, antiepileptic drugs, and psychoeducation. Since 2001 his research has been funded by the Stanley Research Medical Institute (Bethesda, USA) and he is the current Director of the Bipolar Research Program at the Spanish Center of Biomedical Research Network on Mental Health (CIBERSAM), funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation. He has made significant contributions to many of the published bipolar disorder treatment guidelines, and has authored more than 300 original articles, 100 book chapters and 26 complete books, including the recently published 2^nd Edition of Bipolar Disorder in Clinical Practice (Current Medicine Group, 2009). He sits on the editorial board of 20 international scientific journals, including The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Bipolar Disorders, Psychotherapy Psychosomatics, the Journal of Affective Disorders, and Psychopathology, and he reviews articles for more than 40 others. In 2007, he received the Aristotle award and, ex-aequo with Francesc Colom, the Mogens Schou Award for excellence in bipolar disorder research.

Dr Calabrese completed his medical training at Ohio State University and his psychiatric residency at the Cleveland Clinic. After completing a research fellowship at the NIMH, he returned to Cleveland in 1989 to start the Mood Disorders Program. Dr Calabrese is a Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University & Director of the Mood Disorders Program. He co-directs along with Robert Findling, MD, the NIMH-funded ‘Bipolar Research Center’ in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr Calabrese has received five NIMH/Federal research grants. The general focus of the research center is ‘improving clinical outcomes in underserved populations of bipolar disorder’, including those receiving care within community mental health centers, children, adults, older adults, and those currently abusing alcohol or drugs. Dr Calabrese has over 220 scientific publications that focus on the phenomenology and treatment of bipolar disorder. His individual scientific focus is the development of the class of anticonvulsants and the atypical antipsychotic agents as long-term treatments with special emphasis on rapid cycling and dual diagnosis presentations. Dr Calabrese is a member of a number of scientific advisory boards and committees and is affiliated with the American Psychiatric Association. He is also a referee for several scientific journals, including the American Journal of Psychiatry and Annals of Neurology, and has authored or co-authored more than 130 scientific articles and book chapters. Dr Calabrese was chosen by psychiatry residents to receive the ‘Best Teacher of the Year Award’ in three different years, and in 2004, received a NARSAD Lifetime Achievement Award for Psychiatric Research into Mood Disorders.

Prof Grunze received his Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Aachen, Germany, Oxford and London. He also completed his residency at Universitaetsklinik Freiburg, Germany and fellowships at Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Germany and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. Prof Grunze is a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the School of Neurology, Neurobiology and Psychiatry, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Prof Grunze has also served as a faculty member at numerous universities in Germany and Europe. As well as being an editorial reviewer of many journals, he has extensive research experience in many scientific areas and has received numerous awards for his work in schizophrenia and bipolar research. He has published numerous scientific publications and remains a leader in the understanding of bipolar disorders.

Dr Sachs is Associate Professor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School; Clinical Assistant in Psychiatry and Director, Bipolar Mood Disorder Program at Massachusetts General Hospital; Director, Bipolar Clinic and Research Program; and Director, Partners Bipolar Treatment Center. Dr Sachs earned his medical degree at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He interned in family practice and psychiatry at University of Maryland Hospital in Baltimore and was a resident in psychiatry and Chief Resident, Acute Psychiatry Service, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr Sachs is the Principal Investigator of the NIMH Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar disorder. His areas of academic interest include psychopharmacology, bipolar mood disorder, and development of practice guidelines for the treatment of bipolar mood disorder. He serves on the scientific advisory board of the National Depression and Manic Depression Association and is Co-editor-in-chief of Clinical Approaches to Bipolar Disorder and on numerous editorial boards. Dr Sachs has authored over 150 articles, abstracts, books, reviews, and book chapters.

Professor Scott trained in psychiatry in Newcastle upon Tyne and was then a professor in Glasgow and the Institute of Psychiatry in London, before returning to Newcastle. Professor Scott also held visiting academic posts with Aaron Beck at the Penn State University in Philadelphia, Eugene Paykel at Cambridge University, and Eduard Vieta in Barcelona and was also awarded the RCPsych travelling scholarship to Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Jan Scott is an internationally renowned expert in the use of CBT in the treatment of depression and bipolar disorder and her research focuses on combined treatment strategies (using pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy) for individuals with difficult to treat mood disorders and treatment resistant psychosis, and the investigation of the role of psychosocial and cognitive factors in the onset and prognosis of severe mental disorders. Professor Scott is an internationally renowned author and has over 250 publications on these topics, including ‘Overcoming Mood Swings’. Head of Glasgow University’s Department of Psychiatry, she is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the International Association of Cognitive Psychotherapists. She is also a trustee of the Mental Health Foundation.

Prof Ferrier works in a clinical capacity for the Regional Affective Disorders Service. His research interests are in psychopharmacology and the neurobiology and treatment of severe affective disorders. He has published over 200 papers on these topics.  Prof Ferrier was the pharmacological lead on the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) Guidelines for unipolar depression and was Chairman of the NICE Bipolar Disorder Guideline. He has served on the MRC Clinical Fellowship and Wellcome Trust Neuroscience and Mental Health Grant Committees. He is head of the North East Hub of the Mental Health Research Network and is President-Elect of the British Association for Psychopharmacology.

Her background is in psychology, with a BSc from the University of Manchester (UK) and a PhD awarded from the University of Wales College of Medicine. Her research interests are in bipolar disorder, seasonal and non-seasonal depression, quality of life, psychosocial functioning and the development of psychosocial assessment scales, as well as psychometrics and the development of outcome instruments for mood disorders.

Prof Michalak holds a Canadian Institute for Health Research New Investigator Award and Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar Award. Her research has also been supported by the Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation, the BC Mental Health and Addictions Network and the Medical Research Council in the UK. Currently, she has studies underway examining maintaining wellness in BD, the clinical efficacy of mood monitoring, and she is developing a disorder-specific scale to assess quality of life in patients with BD.

Prof Michalak has approximately 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles published or in press, and has published several books and book chapters. She leads the MSFHR funded ‘Collaborative RESearch Team to study psychosocial issues in Bipolar Disorder’ (CREST.BD) team.

Prof Allan Young trained in Medicine and Psychiatry at the Universities of Edin­burgh and Oxford. He has held academic ap­pointments at the Universities of Edinburgh, Oxford and Newcastle upon Tyne, latterly holding the Chair of General Psychiatry at Newcastle, UK. He currently holds the LEEF En­dowed Chair in Research in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Co­lumbia, Vancouver, Canada, where he is also the Associate Director of the Institute of Mental Health. His research in­terests focus on the cause and treatments for severe psychiatric illness­es, particularly mood disorders. Professor Young has received research grant funding from the UK Medical research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the Stanley Medical Research Institute and numerous other funding agencies. He has published over 150 Medline listed publications. His interest is in the causes and treatment of severe mental ill-health, particularly BD.