OLE A ANDREASSEN MD PhD is a professor of biological psychiatry at the University of Oslo, and director of the NORMENT Centre at Oslo University Hospital. His research has a translational focus, with the overall goal of bringing novel research methodology and findings to clinical practice. Andreassen is involved in several international research projects and has coauthored
over 500 peer reviewed publications.

ELENA GARRALDA is Emeritus Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Imperial College London, and Honorary Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry with CNWL Foundation Trust in London. Her clinical and research interests include the interface between physical and mental health problems in children and adolescents, functional physical symptoms and mental health in children with both chronic and critical/acute physical disorders.

GEAROID FITZGERALD is a Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy in the NHS and training programme director for psychotherapy training for the Yorkshire and Humber deanery. He is a psychoanalyst in the British Psychoanalytical Society, the same society of which Enid and Michael Balint were members. He is the Vice President of the British Balint.

CLIVE BODDY is a Professor of Leadership at Middlesex University, London. He previously worked as a market research entrepreneur in the Asia-Pacific region. He has been researching corporate psychopaths since 2005 and has published thirty-five academic papers and two books on their behaviour.

MARY CANNON is Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Youth Mental Health in Department of Psychiatry, Royal College of Surgeons and is a consultant psychiatrist in Beaumont Hospital. Her research interest is in early risk factors for adult mental disorders with a particular emphasis on psychotic symptoms and disorders. She is Chair of the Faculty of Academic Psychiatry of the College of Psychiatrists and is a member of the Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Special Interest Group in Youth Mental Health.

TOM CLONAN is an academic and lectures in the School of Media, DIT. He is also a journalist and provides security analysis for national and international media organisations including RTE, Sky News, the BBC, Al Jazeera and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He is one of Ireland’s foremost whistle-blowers and is cited by Transparency International (Ireland) as a target of ‘Whistle-blower Reprisal’ on the part of the Irish Military Authorities in relation to his research on sexual violence within the Irish Defence Forces.

GARY DONOHOE is Professor and Chair of Psychology and the director of the Cognitive Genetics and Neuroimaging Centre (NICOG) at NUI Galway. The main focus of Prof Donohoe’s research is characterising the biological and early environmental causes of cognitive disability associated with major mental health disorders, and developing treatments to improve these
deficits. He has published over 150 peer reviewed papers in the area. In 2016, he received a European Research Council award for his work on immune models of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia, and the NUIG President’s Award for research excellence.

SIOBHAN MACHALE has practised as a Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist for 19 years, initially in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, before returning to her current post in Beaumont Hospital in 2006. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and a Senior Lecturer in the RCSI. As a Liaison Psychiatrist, her primary role is in the care and management of the mental health needs of patients in the general hospital setting, incorporating the art and language of mind-body medicine.

CIARAN MULHOLLAND is a Consultant Psychiatrist with the Northern Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland, a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Medical Education at Queen’s University Belfast and Visiting Professor to the Bamford Centre for Mental Health at the University of Ulster. He is clinical co-lead for an innovative service for young people with “at risk mental states” and Clinical Director of the recently established Northern Ireland Regional Clinical Network for the treatment of conditions occurring as a consequence of trauma, including trauma arising from the “Troubles”.

Professor A.E. (Freddie) Wood graduated from UCD in 1971. A cardiothoracic surgeon, he carried out the first ever heart transplant in Ireland with the late Maurice Neligan in 1985. He also pioneered complex congenital heart surgery and reparative valve surgery, setting up the National Homograft Valve Bank. Between 1999 and 2010 he served as Director of Heart & Lung Transplantation at the Mater Hospital culminating in the country’s first successful lung transplant. He served as Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon in Congenital Heart Disease to the Royal Victoria Hospital Belfast between 2011 and 2013 and has been Surgical Prosector at RCSI since 2014.

LOUISE ARSENEAULT’S research focuses on the study of harmful behaviours such as violence and substance dependence, their developmental origins, their inter-connections with mental health, and their consequences for victims. In the early stages of her career, she examined harmful behaviours as a developmental outcome, primarily in adolescents and in adults. Over time, the focus of her research broadened to include harmful behaviours as causes of mental health problems.

Louise completed her PhD in biomedical sciences at the University of Montreal and moved to the UK for a post-doctoral training at the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre. She has been working with well-known longitudinal cohorts such as the Montreal Longitudinal Cohorts, the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study and the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, a nationally-representative sample of families with twins in England and Wales. She has also been exploring another important nationally-representative cohort, the National Child Development Survey (NCDS), with a Mid-Career Fellowship Award from the British Academy. She has recently been appointed the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Mental Health Leadership Fellow.

THE RELEVENCE OF BALINT GROUPS FOR DOCTORS IN THEIR DAY TO DAY CLINICAL WORK
DR GEAROID FITZGERALD, LEEDS PARTNERSHIP NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

In this presentation, Dr Fitzgerald will describe the emotional and attitudinal capacities doctors can develop from being in a Balint Group. He will demonstrate how the structure of the group and the stance of the leader can facilitate this development.

ADVANCES IN PSYCHOSIS RESEARCHPSYCHOSIS AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE: LESSONS FROM THE CONFLICT IN NORTHERN IRELAND
Dr CIARAN MULHOLLAND, QUEENS UNIVERSITY BELFAST

There is increasing awareness that psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia are far from impervious to the impact of the social environment. Despite this, the role of conflict and war in the aetiology and course of psychotic illness has not been examined in detail to date. A number of related studies which explore how experiences of childhood trauma, including traumas resulting
from Northern Ireland’s “Troubles”, impact on first episode psychosis, will be presented.

DIFFICULTIES WITH SOCIAL COGNITION IN PSYCHOSIS: CAUSES, CONSEQUENCES & TREATMENTS
PROF GARY DONOHOE, NUIG

Deficits in cognition are often more strongly predictive of disability than clinical symptoms alone. This talk will focus on deficits in social cognition as of particular relevance to understanding disability. Causes of social cognitive deficits – both genetic and environmental – will be discussed, along with recent successes in improving cognitive function using low support treatment capable of being incorporated in standard clinical care.

PROFESSIONALISM AND PATIENT SAFETY
PROF FREDDIE WOOD, MEDICAL COUNCIL, DUBLIN

Prof Wood will outline how promoting patient safety is at the heart of the Medical Councils role. He will explain how good professional practice is based on a shared understanding between the profession and the public of the principles and the values that underpin good care. He will summarise how these principles and values known as the three pillars of Professionalism – Partnership, Practice and Performance – are used as a framework to maintain high quality and patientcentred care.