APA President Harold Eist, M.D., and former president Joseph T. English, M.D., brought the concerns of American psychiatry to an international conference on mental health in the Vatican auditorium in November.

Titled, "In the Image and Likeness of God: Always? Disorders of the Human Mind," the two-day conference received a blessing from Pope John Paul II.

Eist told Psychiatric News that more than 7,000 attendees--including professionals, advocates, and clergy from around the world--packed the auditorium for the conference, which focused on the international repercussions of untreated mental illness.

"It's a real tribute to the Vatican in terms of its increasing acknowledgment of the importance of mental health professionals and its recognition of the significance of advances that have been made by modern psychiatry to bring relief--if not cure--to millions around the world," said Eist.

"The Vatican is aware that only one in one million people worldwide gets attention for mental disorders," he added.

In blessing the conference, the Pope remarked on the importance of "social justice and social sensitivity to the sickest, and the moral responsiblity we have to provide them with adequate care," Eist recalled.

While in Rome, Eist was interviewed by Vatican Radio, which broadcast his remarks internationally.

In that interview, Eist said that the effects of the marketplace revolution in American health care have international repercussions.

He cited what he called the debilitating effect of managed care on research, which is respected for yielding advances that benefit people worldwide.

Also attending the conference was Eliot Sorel, M.D., president of the World Association for Social Psychiatry.

Sorel, who chaired the session "Mental Illness in Different Cultural Contexts," characterized the meeting in Rome as a heartening sign for psychiatrists and patients with mental illness.

"I think it is very exciting and important that the Catholic Church is taking an interest in the healing process of people with mental illness," he said. "Psychiatrists should welcome this. We need all the allies we can get, and so do our patients.

"The church can be a very important ally," Sorel said.

(Psychiatric News, March 7, 1997)