WASP Intro-5
To Study the Nature of Man & His Cultures
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Rakesh K Chadda

President,
World Association of Social Psychiatry

Welcome Message from the President

It gives me immense pleasure in welcoming you to the website of the World Association of Social Psychiatry (WASP). WASP was borne in 1964 as the International Association of Social Psychiatry with Dr Joshua Bierer from the UK as its mentor. It got its new name the World Association of Social Psychiatry in 1974 at its 6th international congress. It gives me great pride in sharing that the WASP is the second oldest world organization in mental health, the first being the World Psychiatric Association (WPA). WASP completed its 75 years of existence in 2024, and its silver jubilee world congress has concluded on 17th January 2026, organised in the beautiful city of Marrakesh in Morocco. The theme of the Congress was “Caring for the vulnerable: Making social psychiatry clinically relevant”. The Congress was a great success with delegates from over 30 countries all across the world.

 

A new EC has taken over after the Congress with myself as President, Andrew Molodynski as President Elect, Rama Rao Gogineni as Secretary General and Yasser Khazaal as Treasurer, and Vincenzo Di Nicola and Roy Abraham Kallivayalil as advisors.  We propose to have a series of scientific activities in the triennium of 2026-2028. The next world congress will be held at New Delhi in late 2028. We will be sharing further details soon.

 

Social psychiatry is one of the vital subspeciality of psychiatry but does not often receive due recognition being eclipsed under the glamour of the biological psychiatry.  We need to sensitise especially our younger colleagues about the role social psychiatry plays in understanding the patient and in brining holistic improvement. Social psychiatry has also important role in reducing disability and burden related to mental and substance use disorders.

 

We propose to hold a series of academic activities in the next three years in collaboration with our member societies and also look forward to their suggestions. WASP has over 15 speciality sections working over different areas of interest in social psychiatry. We look forward to further suggestions and collaborative activities from them.

 

Looking forward to your suggestions.

Rakesh K Chadda
President WASP
drrakeshchadda@gmail.com

Andrew Molodynski

President Elect,
World Association of Social Psychiatry

Message from President Elect

It is a real pleasure and a great responsibility to be the new president-elect of WASP. I am really looking forward to working with Rakesh Chadda our energetic new president, Rama Rao Gogineni our new Secretary General, and Yasser Khazaal our treasurer. There is already lots of new energy and many ideas for the future of WASP as well as for our activities over the next few years.

There is lots to be done to help WASP become a more inclusive organisation. All of us are very keen to see these changes happen and are beginning work on them already. We will of course be keeping relevant people informed of any changes and consulting where necessary. We are aware that the main challenges are to increase the involvement of women in WASP and to encourage more earlier career psychiatrists and others to become involved. Hopefully, both these things will bring more vigour and more ideas to WASP and help us to grow our global family even more and promote our message of inclusive, person centred psychiatry in a difficult world. We also need to develop more activities to involve, support, and encourage people in our member countries to feel part of things and to feel valued.

I’m very much looking forward to playing my part in all of this and I’m very happy to hear from anyone who would like to know more about it or who would like to become more involved in WASP. I know that this is also true of all the other members of the executive committee, including our excellent advisors Roy Kallivayalil and Vincenzo Di Nicola.

Andrew Molodynski
President Elect, WASP

Purpose

  • To study the nature of man and his cultures and the prevention and treatment of his vicissitudes and behavioral disorders.
  • To promote national and international collaboration among professionals and societies in fields related to Social Psychiatry.
  • To make the knowledge and practice of Social Psychiatry available to other sciences and to the public, and
  • To advance the whole health and wellbeing of humankind.

WASP History

WASP Statutes

WASP Declarations

WASP Executive Committee (2025-2028)

President

Rakesh K Chadda

President Elect

Secretary General

Rama Rao Gogineni

Treasurer

Professor Yasser Khazaal

Advisor

Vincenzo Di Nicola

Advisor

Roy Abraham Kallivayalil

Notices & Events

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WASP Council

The Journal: World Social Psychiatry (WSP)

The WASP, under President Roy Abraham Kallivayalil (2016-2019), started its official scientific journal in 2019, with the inaugural issue released at the 23rd World Congress of Social Psychiatry, Romania, 2019.

The journal is peer-reviewed, publishes three issues a year, and encourages high-quality work in the realms of social, and cultural aspects of psychiatry and related areas. The journal is registered with Baidu Scholar, CNKI, EBSCO Databases, Ex Libris – Primo Central, Google Scholar, Hinari, Infotrieve, ProQuest, TdNet, & Wanfang Data.