PSYCHIATRY, MEDICINE AND SOCIETY:
HOMO DEUS OF THE 21st CENTURY AND CHALLENGES OF THE MENTAL HEALTH AND PERSONALIZED MEDICINE

 

Miro Jakovljevic

Department of psychiatry and Psychological Medicine,

School of Medicine, University of Zagreb

29th Danubian Psychiatric Symposium with the topic “Psychiatry, Medicine and Society: Homo Deus of the 21st Century and Challenges of Mental Health and Personalized Medicine” emphasize the importance of the precise, predictive, preventive, personalized, and person-centered (P5) medicine and comorbidities in our age of the COVID-19 syndemics, as well as the essentiality of bridging personal, public and global mental health within compassionate society and empathic civilization. P5 medicine and mental health have become very challenging and exciting topics of great interest and importance. There is no health without mental health as well as there is no sane, compassionate and prosperous society without public mental health and empathic civilization without global mental health. The way we understand individual, public and global mental health and treat mental disorders is changing rapidly. Digital revolution from the start of 21st century is changing significantly all fields of society, science and medicine. As Homo sapiens are a story telling or narrative being, people think in stories and narratives rather than in facts, numbers, graphs and equations. All big stories from the 20th century have collapsed and new narratives, including those on psychiatry and mental health, are emerging with a shift from a homo centric to a data centric world view. Emerging techno-humanism argues that Homo sapiens have completed their cosmic task and high technology is going to create a much superior Homo Deus with upgraded physical and mental abilities. Dataism is promising to give all scientists a common language that easily enables them to get insights across disciplinary borders. Big data algorithms informed by a constant stream of data from biometric sensors could monitor our behavior, health and disease 24/7. Collecting, analyzing, combining and applying large quantities of various data may help to get more precise diagnosis and more effective and efficient treatments tailored to individual patients and so promoting personalized medicine instead of block-buster and stratified medicine. Although personalized medicine is still in its infancy age, it opens up new possibilities for providing old dream “right care and treatment to the right person at the right time” into reality. It tends to increase resilience, antifragility and optimize healthcare for every person at every stage of a disorder, from prevention to personalized and person-centered treatment.

The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a unique disaster has stressed the extreme importance of the three issues for medicine, society and humanity in global: comorbidity, syndemics and infodemic. The COVID-19 syndemics are very complex in its origin, its spread and its consequences at multiple levels so that they are beyond comprehension and control of any single field of knowledge and branch of medicine.  Thinking about COVID-19 through a syndemics concept and taking biological, psychological, social and spiritual dimensions into account, physicians could be more effective in clinical practice and community-based interventions. Knowledge, empathy, solidarity, cooperation and unity are the key factors to long-term survival and flourishing of humankind. The COVID-19 is cruel but crucial lesson for the future of humankind. The crucial message is that we should reexamine and improve our basic understanding of how human society and global world operate in health and disease from the multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary scientific and philosophical approach. Bringing together multiple disciplines and universities with knowledge sharing is the best way to provide transdisciplinary integrative approach to our understanding and practicing of P5 medicine and psychiatry. The 29th Danubian Psychiatric Symposium is organized on the principles of art and practice of learning organization, concept of supermind, collective intelligence and culture of dialogue. Supermind, defined as a powerful combination of many individual minds, represent a group of individuals operating together in creative and intelligent ways, while collective intelligence is the result of groups of individuals thinking and acting together in creative and intelligent ways. As more and more intelligent individuals are closely connecting and acting together serving a purpose larger than themselves the  concept of the greatest good for the greatest people has chance to become reality in our COVID-19 age.  COVID-19 syndemics involve many threats, but also one great hope for brotherhood in medicine, science and humanity. After this preliminary Symposium’s phase (March 18-20, 2021) all accepted presentations will be published in our journal Psychiatria Danubina and be discussed at the final phase of Symposium which will be held in May 20-22, 2021. In the period between preliminary and final phases other collegues can join us with their ideas and articles intended to be published in Psychiatria Danubina.

 

29th Danubian Psychiatric Symposium offers

  • Hot topics: Comorbitity, Resilience, Anti-fragility, Epigenetics, Syndemics
  • Infodemics, Spirituality, Ethics
  • Bridging Personal, Public and Global Mental Health
  • Inter- and Transdisciplinarity – Art and Practice of Learning Organization
  • Holistic, Complementary and Integrative Systemic Approach to Health
  • Personalized and Person-Centered Medicine Approach