Orange-colored carpet is rolled out as orange flags flutter in the late-autumn wind: more than 9,000 physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, as well as the interested public attended this year’s congress organized by the German Association for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics on “Mind – Person – Society” from 23 November 2016 to 26 November 2016 at the congress center CityCube in Berlin. During this four-day mental health congress, which is the largest German-speaking congress of its kind, current trends and developments in this field were presented and discussed in more than 600 events. 

The psychiatric/psychologic team of our subproject A02 mingled with the crowd, soaking in the various perspectives and information as well as presenting their latest results. At the symposium on “Socialization processes and socialization barriers of mentally affected persons with a migratory background,” the heads of project Thi Minh Tam Ta and Eric Hahn presented amongst other things the socio-cultural backgrounds of the diverse ways of Vietnamese migration to Germany in the context of treatment of patients at the outpatient clinic for Vietnamese migrants at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy located at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Benjamin Franklin. 

Thi Minh Tam Ta furthermore presented current data on the influence of migration-related stress on the self-perception of symptoms of depression of Vietnamese migrants  utilizing of the offered psychiatric treatment. Junior researcher and psychologist Main Huong Nguyen received much attention by fellow experts for her presentation on “Acculturation and Severity of Depression Among First-Generation Vietnamese Migrants.” The DGPPN awarded her work and presentation with the DGPPN Poster Prize 2016. Thereby she was one of ten scientists amongst 450 presentations, who were awarded with a prize by a committee of independent experts.

The remarkably positive feedback reflects the great relevance of the anthropological- psychiatric subproject A02 in the field of transcultural and anthropological psychiatry, which is undertaken at SFB 1171 at Freie Universität Berlin and  Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Spurred by the success of the DGPPN Congress the SFB 1171 subproject A02 looks to the new year and its challenges with great motivation.