World Psychiatric Association

History

Origin and founding

The World Psychiatric Association traces its origins to the Association for the Organization of World Congresses of Psychiatry, which held its first world congress in Paris in 1950, followed by subsequent congresses in Zurich, Montreal, Madrid, Mexico City, Hawaii, Vienna, Athens, Rio de Janeiro and Hamburg.

Jean Delay was the first president of the Association for the Organization of World Congresses of Psychiatry when it was started in 1950. Donald Ewen Cameron became president of the World Psychiatric Association at its formal founding in 1961.

WPA and Soviet psychiatry

During the 1970s, the World Psychiatric Association became increasingly involved in the controversy over the political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union. At its 1977 congress in Honolulu, the WPA General Assembly adopted a resolution submitted by the Royal College of Psychiatrists condemning "the systematic abuse of psychiatry for political purposes in the USSR". It also approved, by 122 votes to 66, an American Psychiatric Association proposal to establish a committee to monitor "the misuse of psychiatric skills, knowledge and facilities for the suppression of dissent wherever it occurs".

Relations between the WPA and the Soviet Union subsequently deteriorated. In February 1983, the Soviet All-Union Society of Neurologists and Psychiatrists (AUSNP) withdrew from the WPA while the association was considering its expulsion. The AUSNP remained outside the WPA until 1989, when it was conditionally readmitted following changes respect for human rights and extensive debate among WPA delegates. During the proceedings, the acting secretary of the Soviet delegation acknowledged that "previous political conditions in the U.S.S.R. created an environment in which psychiatric abuse occurred, including for nonmedical reasons."