The Symposium marking the 80 anniversary of military psychiatry organized by the MMA’s Clinic for Psychiatry took place at Military Medical Academy. Among the other eminent experts in the field of psychiatry in our country the event was attended by the head of Military Healthcare Department Colonel Prof. Dr. Zoran Popovic.

Opening the event, the MMA’s head Brigadier General Prof. Dr. Marijan Novakovic congratulated the jubilee of the Clinic and stressed out the significance of psychiatry as one of the most important medical branch. An integrated approach to the patient is necessary during the war and peacetime conditions. The body wounds are related by their nature to psychological disorders and that is the raison of the psychological and psychiatric support in all phases of medical treatment. He also added the importance of continuous work on raising awareness about the mental health protection among both military and civilian population as well as the fact that every healthy society treats the visit to the psychiatrist as the visit to any other specialist.

The head of the MMA’s Clinic for Psychiatry Asst. Prof. Dr. Radomir Samardzic introduced the attendees with the long history and military and war psychiatry organization in Serbia, entaming that way a numerous lectures with the mutual topic of posttraumatic stress disorder.

In course of the Symposium the first introducing lecture was delivered by the Minister of Health Prof. Dr. Slavica Djukic Dejanovic, neuropsychiatrist presenting the topic “Stress, Psychotic Reaction and Cytokine Profiles-Possibilities of Therapeutic Prevention”. Prof. Djukic Dejanovic said that numerous etiological factors of mental disorders are familiar although etiopathogenetical mechanisms of falling sick are still unknown. On today level of knowledge the mental disorders are caused by various factors, in other words, a biological, psychological and social factors participate in their origin and manifestation. 

The director of the Institute of Mental Health Academician Prof. Dr. Dusica Lecic Tosevski delivered the lecture on mental health protection in Serbia. Along with the European statistics data, she presented the advantages and problems of psychiatric service in our country and announced the future actions and measures of precaution within the framework of national strategy.

Asst. Prof. Dr. Nadja Maric Bojovic, director of the Clinic for Psychiatry of the Clinical Center of Serbia, presented the topic of newborn body weight in conditions of stress exposing. In further work of Symposium the lectures of the MMA’s physicians treated the topics of suicide and addictive diseases in military environment, trends in selection of Armed Forces members, consultative psychiatry as well as psychological psychiatric aspects of peacekeeping missions.