An ode to the silver jubilee conference of Indian Association for Social Psychiatry: Too long a time to reach here? Or too short perhaps?

Standing on the vantage point of the Silver Jubilee National Conference of the Indian Association for Social Psychiatry, what have we learned, achieved, accomplished? We held a large number of conferences, have made a number of collaborations. However, most importantly, we have survived! This is, to my mind, no mean task, given the unrelenting ascendancy of biological psychiatry. Social psychiatry must be seen in a global context and in the backdrop of major threats to our civilization. Any discerning person, who himself has survived five decades of psychiatry, would vouch for the bare fact that “no psychiatry is complete without social psychiatry.” Indeed, I would even go as far as to assert that “social psychiatry is core psychiatry.” The few issues that I have highlighted in this perspective – and I am sure there are many more – simply go to show that, in this era of living in a global village, social psychiatry will continue to live forever