CHINA: Recovery, Resilience and Respect: Mental Health in China

17/02/2009

“Try to imagine that patients with Alzheimer's disease are just like sand sculptures standing in the desert.  After a gust of wind, some sand will fall off.  As time goes by, the sculpture gradually loses its original form”

Prof Yu XinProf Yu Xin is the Executive Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Peking University. Under Prof Yu’s enlightened and creative leadership, China is now embarking on the worlds largest and most ambitious program of mental health reform.

Prof Yu will speak about the challenges of building a mental health service for one fifth of the world’s population and the unique partnership forged over many years with Australian colleagues that collaboratively seeks solutions to the enormous challenge of supporting the most marginalised in any society - the mentally ill.

Prof Yu’s outstanding contribution to this area has been recognised with the following national and international positions held: the Inaugural Chairman and Standing Committee Member of the Chinese Psychiatric Association, Board Member International Narcotics Control Board, Member of the International Expert Group for the WHO International Classification of Diseases Revision, Member of the Advisory Board for Mental Health for the Ministry of Health PRC, Vice Chairman of The Chinese Association for Alzheimer’s Disease and consultant to the Aging Research Center of Peking University. In 1998, he was the Hubert Humphrey Fellow at the School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, USA.

In Australia he was awarded the PA/Pfizer Fellowship in 1996 for advanced training at The Academic Unit of Old Age Psychiatry, University of Melbourne and was an invited speaker for the 2005 Deakin lectures in Melbourne. This is a free public lecture presented by Asia-Australia Mental Health (AAMH).

WHEN:       Tuesday 17 February 2009

TIME:         6.15pm to 7.30pm

WHERE:    Carrillo Gantner Basement Theatre, Sidney Myer Asia Centre,

                   The University of Melbourne