It is a great pleasure to present to you our new website. It is indeed an honour for me, as President of the World Association for Social Psychiatry - WASP, to make this communication tool available to our Association, all National Social Psychiatry Associations and all our members worldwide. It is my hope that through our website we will more easily remain in communication with each other and that it will become a vehicle for the growth of WASP and all our affiliated National Associations. Allow me therefore to use our website for the first time to extend to you greetings from WASP and my personal Hi!

It has taken some time, but we wanted to make sure that this medium would be the best in technological sophistication and the easiest and friendliest to use.

I also wish to use this opportunity to introduce to you our new Executive Committee, elected at our World Congress in Prague, in November 2007:

We are committed to make WASP a world alliance for Social Psychiatry and to strive for the welfare of people with mental disorders worldwide. Through our network of associations and friendships across the nations, we also hope to make a contribution to the betterment of international relations and peace on our planet. We invite all our affiliated national societies and colleagues interested in the plight and suffering of those with mental health problems, and in the lack of integration of mental health services with the general health systems, to use our website to exchange ideas and use it as a forum for our own integration as a force for change.

I look forward to read your comments and contributions to our website!

Yours truly,

Professor Julio Arboleda-Flórez
President,  WASP