The Swiss Conference for Academic Psychiatry is the network of academic psychiatrist in Switzerland. It aims to promote psychiatry as a medical specialty that is based on scientific principles and science based knowledge and practice. Psychiatric research and practice start at a biopsychosocial model of mental health and disorders, multimodal treatment approaches (pharmacological, psychotherapeutic, biological) and extend into research of mental health services, service organisation and socio-political health system structures.
In general, the SCAP has the following aims:
- To continuously improve education and treatment practice in Switzerland,
- To foster and represent research and academic training for young and established psychiatrists,
- To promote the interest of young and established academics in psychiatry and related fields and to foster academic careers in psychiatry,
- To provide a platform for scientific and clinical exchange and collaboration amongst Swiss and international academic psychiatry and related fields,
- To increase the visibility of academic psychiatry in Swiss organisations of research, clinical and societal representation,
- To promote the interests of those affected by mental disorders and psychiatry in the public sphere and politics together with other groups in the field of mental health, psychiatry as well as patients and their relatives,
- To cooperate and exchange with clinical and office-based psychiatrists, patients and the wider public to distribute science-based knowledge and to receive input and feedback to improve current and develop novel treatments in psychiatry,
- To promote evidence and science-based public knowledge on mental disorders, patients, institutions and professionals, and psychiatric research,
- To increase public awareness on the needs of psychiatric patients, the current knowledge and practice in psychiatry and the high quality research and teaching at Swiss universities.