The year 2021 has been another tough one for us all. Uncertainty about the COVID situation, restrictions about travel, and difficulties in getting connected have been the major issues that have affected our professional work and personal lives during that year. The WPA has also struggled coping with these limitations. However, that period has given us some motivation and new insight to work under difficult circumstances and to continue with the implementation of our Action Plan 2020-2023^{1, 2}.

The WPA Executive Committee and Standing Committees, along with the Secretariat staff, remained committed to fulfil their responsibilities^3-8. The WPA’s drive to encourage and inspire learning among colleagues and trainees around the world led to offering more online educational activities during 2021. We were delighted to organize, support and promote several new educational modules, courses, teaching sessions and online programmes⁹.

The accelerated development of the WPA education portal and learning management system (LMS) has promoted the launch of new education and training modules to support our young professionals, es­pecially for the emergency response mea­sures during the pandemic period. The first of these modules supports psychiatrists in using e-mental health tools. The portal also gives ready access to WPA’s existing training materials available in several languages. Available programmes also include ICD-11 and Yoga courses, free webinars on Early Intervention in Psychosis, updates in Psychopharmacology and courses on Tele-psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

We continued with our projects outlined in the Action Plan. Various Working Groups offered a number of activities in ar­­eas of training, research and clinical updates. The Working Groups on Co-morbidity in Mental Illnesses, Early Intervention in Psychosis, Public Mental Health, and Promotion of Psychiatry among Medical Students highlighted their contributions in various activities^10-12. I am pleased that we also completed some unfinished projects started in the previous triennium¹³. The WPA Scientific Sections likewise supported the scientific work of the Association in an inspiring way^14-16.

Since the start of the network of WPA Collaborating Centres in 2016, these centres are providing practical advice on teach­ing, policy, research and clinical activities in psychiatry worldwide. During 2021, the network, now including eight sites, supported the implementation of the WPA’s strategic plan to build a global alliance for better mental health¹⁷.

In addition to the pandemic, unfortunately, we saw many adversities in 2021 in several parts of the world. Following WPA’s mission to help and support our member­ship during disasters, we established an Ad­visory Committee for Responses to Emer­gencies (ACRE), that brought together the leaders of the larger Member Societies to fa­cilitate practical and concrete aid to Mem­ber Societies in need. This work contin­ued mobilizing and fostering education, in­formation collection, and development of lo­cal, national and international strategies to cope with the mental health conse­quenc­es of emergencies throughout 2020-21.

The WPA recently formed a sub-committee of the ACRE for Afghanistan’s deteriorating conditions, that are not only causing an humanitarian crisis but also adding concerns about provisions and delivery of health care for the general population. We, at the WPA, as a part of our ACRE project, are working with our fellow Afghan mental health professionals to offer ongoing support through the provision of medicines, patient assessments and training.

With the start of the WPA eNewsletter in 2021, we are facilitating sharing of activities and reports from our membership. The Newsletter has emerged as a strong medium for our visibility on the social media platform and a better communication among different components of the Association.

World Psychiatry, the WPA official jour­nal, achieved an impact factor of 49.548. It was reaffirmed that it is ranked as the number one in the list of psychiatric journals and in the Social Science Citation Index, and number five among all the journals in the Clinical Medicine category. The journal is published regularly in three languages (English, Spanish and Russian), with individual issues or articles also available on the WPA website in other languages (Chinese, French, Arabic, Turkish, Japanese, Romanian and Polish). More than 60,000 mental health professionals regularly receive the electronic or the print version of the journal. All the back issues can be freely downloaded from the PubMed system and the WPA website.

We very much enjoyed our successful virtual World Congress of Psychiatry that took place in October 2021. As always, the current pandemic is all about adapting and innovating, and we feel that we were able to redesign the event from the ground up to ensure that we could bring the most timely clinical, academic and research topics to our membership. I am also pleased that we are actively working for our next World Congress to be held in Bangkok on August 3-6, 2022.

We are optimistic that the new challenges that will undoubtedly come, as the full impact on mental health following this pandemic becomes evident, will be addressed effectively. Like many, the WPA is learning fast with the changes and looks forward with confidence to its future, remaining fully committed to fulfilling its triennium’s goals.

Let's shape the future of psychiatry and mental health together.

2021 年对我们所有人来说又是艰难的一年。COVID 形势的不确定性、旅行的限制以及联系困难是那一年影响我们的专业工作和个人生活的主要问题。WPA 也一直在努力应对这些限制。然而，那段时间给了我们一些动力和新的洞察力，让我们在困难的情况下工作，并继续实施我们的 2020-2023 年行动计划^{1, 2}。

WPA 执行委员会和常设委员会以及秘书处工作人员仍然致力于履行其职责^3-8。WPA 鼓励和激发世界各地同事和学员学习的努力导致在 2021 年提供了更多的在线教育活动。我们很高兴组织、支持和推广几个新的教育模块、课程、教学课程和在线项目⁹。

WPA教育门户和学习管理系统（LMS）的加速发展推动了新的教育和培训模块的推出，以支持我们的年轻专业人员，特别是在大流行期间的应急措施。第一个模块支持精神科医生使用电子心理健康工具。该门户网站还可以随时访问 WPA 现有的多种语言培训材料。可用的课程还包括 ICD-11 和瑜伽课程、关于精神病早期干预的免费网络研讨会、精神药理学更新以及远程精神病学、心理治疗以及儿童和青少年精神病学课程。

我们继续执行行动计划中概述的项目。各个工作组在培训、研究和临床更新领域开展了许多活动。精神疾病合并症、精神病早期干预、公共心理健康和促进医学生精神病学工作组强调了他们在各种活动中的贡献^10-12。我很高兴我们还完成了在上一个三年期¹³开始的一些未完成的项目。WPA 科学部门同样以鼓舞人心的方式支持协会的科学工作^14-16。

自 2016 年 WPA 合作中心网络启动以来，这些中心为全球精神病学的教学、政策、研究和临床活动提供实用建议。2021 年，该网络现在包括八个站点，支持实施 WPA 的战略计划，以建立一个改善心理健康的全球联盟¹⁷。

不幸的是，除了大流行之外，我们在 2021 年还看到了世界多个地区的许多逆境。遵循 WPA 在灾害期间帮助和支持我们的会员的使命，我们成立了应急响应咨询委员会 (ACRE)，该委员会汇集了较大的会员协会的领导人，以促进对有需要的会员协会的实际和具体援助。这项工作继续动员和促进教育、信息收集以及地方、国家和国际战略的制定，以应对整个 2020-21 年期间突发事件的心理健康后果。

WPA 最近成立了 ACRE 的一个小组委员会，负责应对阿富汗日益恶化的状况，这不仅导致了人道主义危机，而且还增加了对普通民众提供和提供医疗保健的担忧。作为我们 ACRE 项目的一部分，我们 WPA 正在与我们的阿富汗心理健康专业人员合作，通过提供药物、患者评估和培训来提供持续的支持。

随着 2021 年 WPA 电子通讯的开始，我们正在促进会员分享活动和报告。时事通讯已成为我们在社交媒体平台上的知名度和协会不同组成部分之间更好的沟通的强大媒介。

WPA 官方期刊World Psychiatry的影响因子为 49.548。重申其在精神病学期刊和社会科学引文索引中排名第一，在临床医学类所有期刊中排名第五。该杂志定期以三种语言（英语、西班牙语和俄语）出版，个别问题或文章也可以在 WPA 网站上以其他语言（中文、法语、阿拉伯语、土耳其语、日语、罗马尼亚语和波兰语）提供。超过 60,000 名心理健康专业人士定期收到该期刊的电子版或印刷版。所有过刊都可以从 PubMed 系统和 WPA 网站免费下载。

我们非常享受 2021 年 10 月成功举办的虚拟世界精神病学大会。与往常一样，当前的流行病都是关于适应和创新的，我们认为我们能够从头开始重新设计活动，以确保我们可以为我们的会员带来最及时的临床、学术和研究主题。我也很高兴我们正在积极筹备将于 2022 年 8 月 3 日至 6 日在曼谷举行的下一届世界大会。

我们乐观地认为，随着这一流行病对心理健康的全面影响显而易见，无疑将到来的新挑战将得到有效解决。像许多人一样，WPA 正在快速学习变化，并满怀信心地展望未来，继续全力以赴实现其三年期的目标。

让我们一起塑造精神病学和心理健康的未来。