The 9th World Congress of Biological Psychiatry was held on June 28-July 2, 2009, at the Palace of Congresses (Le Palais des Congrès de Paris) in Paris, France.

The new leadership of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP) was elected on July 1, 2009. Prof. Florence Thibaut (France) is the new President of the WFSBP. Prof. Robertas Bunevicius (Lithuania) and Prof. Constantin R. Soldatos (Greece) are the new Vice-Presidents of the WFSBP. Prof. Norbert Müller (Germany) is the Secretary-Treasurer. Prof. Yoshio Hirayasu (Japan) and Prof. Jorge Tellez-Vargas (Colombia) are Associate Secretary-Treasurers.



The Congress consisted of an opening lecture, 5 plenary lectures, 4 special lectures, 88 symposia, 10 debates, 10 treatment guidelines sessions, 14 workshops, 36 free communications, 5 young scientist award sessions, and 51 guided poster tours with over 1020 posters. Most research presentations were from the USA, Germany, France, UK, and Japan. A lot of presentations were from Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, Italy, Israel, Australia, Brazil, Austria, India, Sweden, Russia, Spain, Greece, and Argentina.

Many symposia including “Translational neuroscience may inform treatment development for posttraumatic stress disorder,” “Suicide prevention: Focusing on modifiable risk factors,” “Recent advances in the neurobiology of suicide,” “Psychiatric disorders and thyroid axis functioning across lifecycles,” “New findings on the neurobiological basis of language abnormalities in schizophrenia,” “Impulse disorders – categorical versus dimensional approaches: State of the evidence,” “New approaches to diagnostics and treatment in personality disorders,” “Genetic strategies in the search for genes in schizophrenia,” “Neurosciences of suicidal behaviour: New targets for prevention?” “Are biological measures useful in predicting antipsychotic treatment response in schizophrenia?” “Biological markers and clinical features in depression: A difficult puzzle,” “Neurobiological correlates of dissociation and influence on information processing in stress-related disorders,” “Aß Immunotherapy of Alzheimer’s disease,” “EEG and MEG response to mismatch stimuli as an index of schizophrenia neurobiology and genetics,” “New strategies and tools in the field of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS),” “Social cognition, social hormones and psychophathology,” “Neural circuitry and mood disorders: Relationship to course of illness and treatment outcome,” “Recent advances in neuropharmacology of stress” were met with a significant interest by Congress participants. The Congress Program and Abstracts have been published online at http://www.wfsbp-congress.org/

The 10th World Congress of Biological Psychiatry will be held in Prague, Czech Republic, on May 29-June 3, 2011. The WFSBP is also sponsoring the 3rd International Forum “Innovation in Psychiatry” (INNOPSY 2009) (Milan, Italy, November 18-20, 2009).