Mental Disorders in Children Workshop
07/10/2016
The UAB's Institut de Neurociències (INc), in collaboration with the CORE Mental Health of the UAB, the Vall d’Hebron Research Instuitute and the Institute for the Study of Affective Neuroscience, has organised a scientific workshop in which to debate factors influencing vulnerability and resilience to stress in early life and mental disorders affecting children and adolescents.
The workshop, which will take place on 25 and 26 October at CosmoCaixa Barcelona (Carrer Isaac Newton 26, Barcelona), is one of the B-DEBATE activities, an initiative by Biocat with the support from the “la Caixa” Foundation. B-DEBATE aims to drive top-notch international scientific events to foster debate, collaboration and open exchange of knowledge among experts of renowned national and international prestige in order to tackle complex challenges of high interest in the life sciences.
The Scientific Committee is formed by several members of the INc, Dr Roser Nadal (leader), Dr Adolf Tobeña (coleader), Dr Antonio Armario and Dr Raül Andero, as well as Dr J Antoni Ramos-Quiroga (Vall d’Hebron Research Institute). The debate will include the participation of national and international researchers leaders in their field, such as Gal Richter-Levin (University of Haifa, Israel); Carmen Sandi (Brain & Mind Institute, EPFL, Switzerland); Mathias V Schmidt (Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Germany); and Kerry Ressler (McLean Hospital - Harvard Medical School, USA). They will be discussing how environmental experiences, positive and negative, impact in the long-term behaviour and physiology of the nervous system.
Mental health disorders are the leading cause of disability in western countries accounting for 25 percent of all years of life lost due to disability and premature mortality. The World Economic Forum recognised that mental disorders have emerged as the single largest health cost, with global projections increasing to $6 trillion annually by 2030, more than diabetes, cancer, and pulmonary diseases combined.
Most mental disorders (70%) start early in life (infancy, childhood and adolescence) and are the product of genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors. One of the most studied environmental factors that predispose to Psychopathology is early life stress. The knowledge of the factors responsible for inducing vulnerability versus resilience regarding early life stress exposure is of vital importance, and can have key preventive and therapeutic implications. Moreover, it has been recently shown that “positive” experiences, such as environmental enrichment, also shape brain development, through the induction of epigenetic changes that can even be transmitted from one generation to another.
More information, including how to register, can be found at:
http://www.bdebate.org/en/forum/early-life-experiences-vulnerability-or-resilience