From substance use and post-traumatic stress to matters of love and death, the 2019 Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists annual congress in Cairns highlighted and explored a diverse range of issues.
This final article in Croakey‘s Conference News Service coverage of #RANZCP2019 provides stories, snapshots, interviews and tweets from a number of sessions, speakers and topics.
“Driving not just reflecting inequalities’: Alcohol and other drugs
Watch two video interviews with psychiatrist Dr Shalini Arunogiri, who is chair of the RANZCP’s Faculty of Addiction Psychiatry.
Here she outlines a new RANZCP campaign looking at what role psychiatry should play in addressing the impacts of and interactions between alcohol and mental illness.
In the second interview, Arunogiri discusses her takeaways from a #RANZCP2019 session by Professor Billie Bonevski from the University of Newcastle about smoking and mental illness.
Contrary to most other Australian medical and health groups, RANZCP has released a new position statement in support of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes and other vaporised nicotine products.
 
“PTSD: A lifelong problem if they don’t get help”
Keynote speaker Professor Patricia Resick, from Duke University in the US, developed Cognitive Processing Therapy for the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In her address at #RANZCP2019 she gave a step by step guide to using it effectively, warning that too often therapists “take it and put their own spin on it or ramble off in some other direction”.
“I think of PTSD as an easily treated disorder but I think it takes skill to learn and do the protocols properly and stick to them,” she said.
Watch our interview with Resick:
This YouTube video featuring Resick may also be of interest.
Sessions on the mental health of first responders including police, paramedics and defence personnel were also popular at the congress, with a selection of tweets below.
Vision for a new president
RANZCP president John Allan spoke to Croakey about his vision for the role which he took on formally during #RANZCP2019, including training, public advice and advocacy.
Allan, a former chief psychiatrist in both Queensland and New South Wales, also discusses his highlights and takeaways from the congress.
As the congress trended on Twitter, other delegates reflected on what they would like to see for future events:
Matters of the heart
Other sessions from Twitter
Tallying up Twitter and other final analytics
This is the final article in our #RANZCP2019 series.
All our interviews from the congress have been compiled into one playlist. Each was broadcast live on Periscope via Twitter and later uploaded to CroakeyTV on YouTube. As at 13 June, they had been viewed a total of 1,810 times across Periscope and YouTube.
According to Symplur analytics, the #RANZCP2019 hashtag had more than 2,000 tweets.
