Public Policy and Psychiatry
The World Psychiatric Association (WPA) Section for Public Policy and Psychiatry is engaged in how public policy and psychiatry influence each other. The section strives to illuminate public policy in mental health from an international perspective. In the past few years, we have been engaged in highlighting integration of mental health services, human rights and stigma. Our new challenge is a focus on a more environmental mental health and ecosystem perspective, which includes the importance of access to, and the healing effects of nature. In the public policy context, we want to work towards action on preventing and ameliorating the mental health impacts of climate change. And we also want to encourage a mental health ecosystem approach to planning our mental health services, as well as applying complexity science.
Section Officers
Secretary
Ann Faerden
Oslo University Hospital, Acute psychiatry Building 32,
0407 Oslo, Norway
Section member list can be found here
In memory of Gabriela Cruz Ares passed away on the 18th of July 2025 in Hamburg, Germany.
Gabriela Cruz Ares was chair of the Section Public Policy and Psychiatry from 2022 until 2025. She joined the section in 2019 as co-chair. She was too young to leave us, just 49 years old. Gabriela was foremost a lovely human being, a very dedicated psychiatrist and a creative, inspiring and supportive member of the Section. She initiated and took part in all the symposia we submitted and presented at the different WPA meetings. The last presentation our section had with Gabriela was at the WPA World congress in Vienna in 2023 with the title: “Ecosystems, Nature and Mental Health – can public policy make a positive contribution?”, which was an intersectional symposium between the Section for Public Policy and Psychiatry and the Section for Evolutionary Psychiatry.
Gabriela was born in Mexico where she studied medicine, with a post degree in forensic psychiatry. She met her husband Jan in Berlin during a vacation in 2009. He moved first to Mexico to be with her, where their first daughter was born. They then moved to Germany in 2011, where Gabriela got to work as a doctor in a day clinic in psychiatry. Her second daughter was born in 2015. She then started the long road for acceptance as a German psychiatrist which was achieved in 2020. Since then, she worked in the department of psychiatry and psychotherapy in Asklepios Westklinikum in Hamburg, Germany.
Her passing away is so very, very sad, mostly for her two daughters and husband, but for us in the Public Policy section, there is also an empty space after her. We miss her, with her characteristic smile, positivity, her way of saying “super”, her engagement, her professionalism, new ideas for the field and always eager to support public policy in psychiatry. We will try to do our best without her.
Members of the Public Policy and Psychiatry section,
Ann Faerden, Vivienne Miller, Alan Rosen, Mariana Pinto da Costa
