Inaugural lecture: Professor Crick Lund

Dear colleagues and students

I write to invite you to the next Vice-Chancellor’s Inaugural Lecture, which will be presented by Professor Crick Lund. The lecture is titled “Ten reasons to invest in population mental health in low- and middle-income countries”.

Professor Lund is a pioneer in researching mental health care and developing mental health policies and services to address the growing burden of mental illness in South Africa and other low- and middle-income countries. He has received numerous prestigious awards, such as the TW Kambule Award from the National Science and Technology Forum.

He trained as a clinical psychologist at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and was subsequently involved in developing post-apartheid norms for mental health services for the national Department of Health. He has also worked for the World Health Organization (WHO) on the development of the WHO Mental Health Policy and Service Guidance Package.

Professor Lund was a founding member of the Alan J Flisher Centre for Public Mental Health at UCT, a research consortium focusing on the integration of mental health into primary care in low- and middle-income countries and served as its first director from 2010 to 2017. He also serves as Professor of Global Mental Health and Development in the Centre for Global Mental Health in the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London.

He has a special interest in creating public awareness by highlighting the links between poverty and mental illness and by exploring ways to break this cycle with his research. In his inaugural lecture, he will make the case for investing in the mental health of people living in low- and middle-income countries by drawing on his extensive mental health research and policy work.

He will provide an insight into the burden of mental disorders on a global scale and the economic and social costs of mental illness. He will elaborate further on cost-effective interventions that have been developed together with his PRIME (Programme for Improving Mental Health Care) and AFFIRM (Africa Focus on Intervention Research for Mental Health) research teams in various low- and middle-income countries.

When: Wednesday, 23 May 2018

Where: New Learning Centre Theatre, Anatomy Building, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town

Time: 17:30 (doors open at 17:00)

RSVP: Please confirm your attendance online by Monday, 21 May 2018.

For further information, please email or phone 021 650 4847.

Sincerely

Dr Max Price
Vice-Chancellor

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