April 23rd - 25th, 2026
Fort Pontchartrain Detroit, a Wyndham Hotel in Detroit, Michigan
47th ANNUAL MEETING
Borders, Barriers, and Belonging:
Cultural Psychiatry & Global Mental Health
in a Time of Displacement and Division
Welcome to the SSPC 47th Annual Meeting
Everything you need for the event is included here!
Use the links on this page to access the full schedule for each day of the meeting. The full schedule includes more information about each session and the room locations.
Scroll down to learn about our Keynote speaker, annual award winners, how to explore Detroit and more!
WIFI Information
Network: WYNDHAM
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Annual Meeting Sponsor
Agenda for the Event
Click the buttons below to view the full schedule for each day. The room locations are located at the end of the title of each session.
2026 Keynote Speaker: Laurence J. Kirmayer, MD, PhD
Distinguished James McGill Professor & Director
Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry
Director, Culture & Mental Health Research Unit
Institute of Community & Family Psychiatry, Jewish General Hospital
Thursday, April 23 from
9:00am-10:30am in Grand A
Presentation: Unity through diversity: Cultural psychiatry as an arena for building pluralistic civil society
SSPC Annual Awards
The SSPC Annual Awards recognize excellence in lifetime achievement, creative scholarship and exceptional contributions to cultural psychiatry and to SSPC. Please take this opportunity to nominate those whom you believe should be recognized for their contributions.
Celebrate the extraordinary accomplishments of the 2026 award recipients during the Annual Meeting Assembly and Awards presentation taking place at 12:00pm on Friday, April 24th in Grand A!
Lifetime Achievement Award: Larry Merkel, MD, PhD
Presented for outstanding and enduring contributions to the field of cultural psychiatry.
Larry Merkel, MD, PhD, Professor Emeritus in the University of Virginia Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences
Richard Lawrence (“Larry”) Merkel, MD, PhD is Professor Emeritus in the University of Virginia Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences. He graduated from University of Virginia School of Medicine and did his residency in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He then was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and a Senior Fellow at The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Care Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He later received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania.
At the University of Virginia his distinguished cultural psychiatry career has focused on the needs of Appalachia and rural mental health through clinical care, administration of clinics and programs, teaching medical students and psychiatry/family medicine residents, and leading the APA Caucus of Rural Psychiatry. From 1990 to 2012 he was Director of Psychiatric Medicine and Specialty Care Core of the Southeastern Mental Health Research Center. Since 2008 he has taught within the Department of Anthropology. In 2014 he became Director of the Global Mental Health Track and in 2015 he became Director of the Division of Outreach within the department. Throughout this time, he has been working to improve mental health care in Central Appalachia through the development of clinics, telepsychiatry and ECHO. He also directed mental health care for refugees through the Family Medicine’s International Clinic. Through the Global Mental Health Track and the Division of Outreach he has fostered international partnerships with the Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Uganda, the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito, Ecuador, Totonicapán Hospital, Xela Guatemala, and the Shiprock – Northern Navajo Medical Center, Shiprock, New Mexico to enhance mental health care and training.
Throughout his career at the University of Virginia he has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Medicine Faculty Teaching Award, the UVA Master Educator Award of the School of Medicine, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. UVA Health Award, and the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Psychiatric Society of Virginia. He is a member of the University of Virginia Academy of Distinguished Educators. Hi is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and has been a recipient of the APA Irma Bland Award for Excellence in Teaching Psychiatry Residents. He served on the SSPC Board of Directors from 2002-2014, and chaired the SSPC 2002 Annual Meeting in Charlottesville.
Creative Scholarship Award: Eunice Yuen, MD, PhD
Presented for a significant creative contribution to the field of cultural psychiatry.
Eunice Yuen, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Yale Adolescent Intensive Outpatient Program, and Associate Medical Director, Parent and Family Development Program, Yale Child Study Center
Eunice Yuen, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Yale Adolescent Intensive Outpatient Program, and Associate Medical Director at the Parent and Family Development Program at Yale Child Study Center. Her clinical and research in children’s mental health covers from basic science on genetics and neurobiology to community-based advocacy, education, and clinical intervention effectiveness research. Dr. Yuen grew up in Hong Kong and is a proud mother of two Asian American children. Dr. Yuen is the Founder and Director of Yale Compassionate Home, Action Together (CHATogether), a culturally- and family-oriented program using interactive theater as educational tools to promote mental health in minority children, young adults, and parents, for which she is awarded this year’s SSPC Creative Scholarship Award. CHATogether expanded to clinical family intervention in minoritized families in 2020, and since has received several prestigious recognitions, including Yale Child Study Center Jean Adnopoz Community Service Award, Yale New Haven Hospital Innovation Award, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) Norbert and Charlotte Rieger Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Award, and Association for Ambulatory Behavioral Healthcare (AABH) Program of the Year.
Dr Yuen also serves in several professional roles, including AACAP Family Committee Member, AACAP Executive Committee Member for Children, Families, and Immigration Taskforce, AACAP Asian Caucus Co-chair, Group for Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) Child Committee Co-chair, World Psychiatric Association (WPA) Child Psychiatry Section Member, and the Founder of the AACAP international initiative “Asian Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists Around the World”.
Liz Kramer Award: Alan Teo, MD, MS
Presented for exceptional contributions to the growth and mission of SSPC.
Alan Teo, MD, MS, Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Oregon Health & Science University, and Director of Education and Core Investigator, Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC), VA Portland Health Care System (VAPORHCS)
Alan Teo, M.D, M.S., has a long track record of dedicated service to SSPC. He has participated in many facets of SSPC governance dating back to 2012, including membership and finances, culminating in his leadership as Treasurer, and then most recently as President. Alan is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University, and Director of Education and Core Investigator at the Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC) at the VA Portland Health Care System (VAPORHCS). As a physician-investigator, Dr. Teo’s work intersects the fields of health services, behavioral science, and social and cultural psychiatry. The overarching theme of his research is the role of social relationships in influencing mental health outcomes. He has a particular focus on insights and interventions that can mitigate loneliness and social isolation as a suicide prevention strategy in military veterans, and he is an international authority on hikikomori.
Charles Hughes Fellowship: Omeesha Krishnan, BS, MA
Presented to a graduate student who has an interest in and commitment to cultural psychiatry and mental health.
Omeesha Krishnan, BS, MA, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado
Trajectories in expatriate tragedies: Qualitative exploration among Indian women in the UAE
Omeesha Sanjay Krishnan is a graduate student in the Master of Arts in International Disaster Psychology: Trauma and Global Mental Health program at the University of Denver's Graduate School of Professional Psychology. As a third-culture, South Indian individual who has lived and trained across India, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States, her professional trajectory reflects a deep commitment to cultural psychiatry and global mental health.
Her research examines how Western psychological frameworks contend with cultural contexts. At Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi's Neurological Institute, she contributed to publications examining mental health outcomes in Emirati populations with neurological conditions, revealing substantially higher rates of psychological distress than documented in Western populations. She also aided in adapting the Pain Disability Index to Arab contexts. This work has been presented at international conferences and published.
During her undergraduate degree, she explored grief trajectories in young Indian expatriate women in the UAE, challenging linear Western grief models and revealing how transnational populations navigate conflicting cultural scripts for mourning. Currently, her clinical training spans the University of Denver's Trauma & Disaster Recovery Clinic and Birch Psychology, where she provides therapy to clients with diverse cultural backgrounds and trauma histories. Her current independent research project examined Western trauma frameworks and cultural resistance in South Indian gender-based violence interventions, exploring how practitioners navigate imported Western models while honoring indigenous healing practices rooted in collective, relational, and spiritual dimensions of recovery. She is committed to decolonizing psychology and improving the appropriateness of interventions for non-Western contexts.
John Spiegel Fellowship: Wei-Hsiang Liao, MD, MS
Presented to a graduate student who has an interest in and commitment to cultural psychiatry and mental health.
Wei-Hsiang Liao, MD, MS, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
The Psychological Life of a Collective Defense: Anxiety, Identity, and Taiwan’s Silicon Shield
Wei-Hsiang Liao is a psychiatrist and Ph.D. student at McGill University under the supervision of Prof. Laurence Kirmayer. His research examines how depression is governed and understood in Taiwan through the interplay of clinical practice, policy, and cultural narratives. Grounded in a cultural–ecosocial framework, his work investigates how diagnostic categories and institutional discourses delineate the moral and epistemic boundaries of distress and belonging.
Using ethnography, discourse analysis, and illness-narrative methods, he explores how experiences of suffering are mediated by social responsibility, productivity, and collective ideals. Trained in psychiatry, health services research, and psychotherapy, Wei-Hsiang seeks to bridge clinical psychiatry and social science to inform culturally responsive models of care. His broader interests include the localization of psychiatric knowledge in East Asia, the moral economy of distress, and the global circulation of mental-health discourses. By situating Taiwan within transnational conversations on governance and healing, he aims to illuminate how political, institutional, and psychological borders shape experiences of suffering and recovery.
Places to Explore in Detroit, Michigan
When you’re not attending sessions, downtown Detroit is a vibrant, walkable district filled with rich history, stunning architecture, world-class attractions, and a growing culinary and cultural scene. The Fort Pontchartrain Hotel enjoys a prime location—directly adjacent to Huntington Place, the downtown convention center, and just steps from the city’s most popular destinations. Download a map of the full list of locations to check out in Detroit by clicking here!
Tell Us About Your Experience - Overall Evaluation
Thank you for joining us in Michigan for this year’s Annual Meeting. All participants are encouraged to share feedback about your experience during the Annual Meeting through our event evaluation linked below. SSPC reads each evaluation and gives your comments and feedback every consideration when planning future meetings.
Registering On-Site?
Click here to register for the Annual Meeting if you did not pre-register.
Conference Contacts
If you have any questions, please contact:
Gwen Mitchell at Gwen.Mitchell@du.edu
Ruta Rangel at rbraz@email.gwu.edu