48th ANNUAL MEETING

Policy changes in the US are putting healthcare increasingly out of reach for many, while slashed funding and program eliminations have decimated global health efforts. In these contexts, ongoing work to build sustainable systems of care becomes all the more important and challenging. We invite submissions that examine the systems, policies, and structural conditions that shape mental health and access to care. We also invite sessions that explore solutions for mental health financing, community-based care, task sharing, and innovative strategies for sustaining mental health services in unstable funding environments. We welcome submissions on education and supervision in cultural psychiatry and global mental health during challenging times, including cultural humility training, reflective practice, supervision models, and trainee-led initiatives.

The current moment demands an acceleration of efforts at power-sharing and a broader definition of whose knowledge counts in mental health research, practice, education, and policy. We invite submissions that engage with lived experience leadership, co-production instead of tokenism, epistemic justice, and meaningful power sharing in mental health systems. We also welcome work on decolonizing global mental health curricula and partnerships, local leadership and knowledge sovereignty, the ethics of Global North–South collaborations, and approaches that move beyond simply exporting Global North interventions.

The rapid expansion of Artificial Intelligence (AI), including its use in digital mental health, raises important questions about health, mental health care, and human connection across contexts. Some changes bring the potential to increase access and efficiency through AI-enabled screening, clinical training and documentation, and tools that support research productivity. At the same time, there is a need for critical work on algorithmic and cultural bias, privacy, environmental devastation, and the limits of standalone AI-based support. We invite submissions that explore mental health implications of social media use, as well as recent policy changes and legal rulings, such as social media age bans. Other submissions might explore co-production of digital mental health tools and the future of global mental health in virtual and hybrid spaces.

There is growing interest in family systems and perinatal mental health within cultural psychiatry and global mental health. We invite submissions that examine topics such as youth/parent/family co-design, intergenerational care, stepped care and task-sharing approaches in perinatal mental health care, life-course and developmental perspectives, and family therapy and perinatal care in LMICs, conflict-affected settings, and migrant communities. We especially welcome work that centers the voices of children, caregivers, and communities; attends to parent-infant and early childhood relationships; and explores culturally responsive approaches to supporting families navigating trauma, displacement, disability, neurodevelopmental differences, chronic illness, or other complex social and health-related stressors. Submissions may include clinical, community-engaged, prevention-oriented, or systems-level approaches to strengthening relational health and family wellbeing across the perinatal, early childhood, adolescent, and intergenerational life course.