December 9, 2010
Max Fink, MD, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurology at Stony Brook University, travelled last month to Nyköping Sweden (outside Stockholm) and Salonica, Greece to participate in international conferences on Catatonia and Melancholia.
The meeting in Sweden was organized by Håkan Odeberg in response to attacks on electroconvulsive treatment by a Swedish television program last year. The public audience included representatives of the press and TV. Dr. Fink presented two workshops highlighting the effectiveness of ECT: one on the diagnosis and treatment of Melancholia and the other on the prevalence, recognition, and effective treatment of Catatonia syndrome. Additional talks were presented by the historian of psychiatry Edward Shorter (co-author with Dr. Fink of Endocrine Psychiatry), Jan-Otto Ottosson of Göteborg (co-author with Dr. Fink of Ethics in ECT), and Swedish writers.
Salonica was the site of a Conference on Psychiatry and the Neurosciences sponsored by the International Neuropsychiatric Association, the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry, and the World Psychiatric Association. Dr. Fink, who was a member of the Honorary Committee for the conference, co-chaired a symposium with Lefteris Lykouras on Subtyping Severe Depression, which included a presentation by Dr. Fink on Melancholia. The following day Dr. Fink gave a lecture on the Catatonia syndrome.
Iannis Zervas, a former resident and Fellow of the Department of Psychiatry at Stony Brook University, co-chaired the conference’s local organizing committee and made several presentations. Dr. Zervas is a member of the faculty of Athens University and the Eginition Hospital where he heads the Women’s Mental Health Clinic.
