Ana Barajas is a psychologist and researcher for the Centre d’Higiene Mental Les Corts in Barcelona, the Early Psychosis Intervention Programme (EPIP) and the Master Plan on Mental Health and Addictions (PDSMiAd). She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from the Universitat de Barcelona and is currently completing a PhD programme in Clinical Psychology with a focus on early-stage psychotic disorders at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She also holds a Master’s Degree in Child and Adult Clinical Psychopathology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She completed training supervised by Prof. Max Birchwood in the Early Intervention Service at the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust.
Ms Barajas has collaborated on several research projects with an epidemiological and descriptive approach to incipient psychotic disorders, and has published in various high-impact national and international journals. She is currently coordinating various studies that follow two lines of research: a) the adaptation and validation of psychometric instruments and b) clinical trials that evaluate the effectiveness of specific interventions.
Her research focuses on the study of high-risk populations for psychosis and first-episode psychosis and specifically explores: a) psychosis onset predictors, b) cognitive impairment and the effectiveness of cognitive remediation interventions, c) the effectiveness of early intervention programmes for spectrum psychotic disorders, d) the psychometric properties of instruments for assessing populations with an incipient psychotic disorder and e) clinical implications of gender differences for incipient psychosis.
Ms Barajas has belonged to the Catalan Research Workgroup on Women’s Mental Health since 2006.
Gemma Garcia-Parés is an MD, PhD from the University of Barcelona (UB, 1999), specialist in Psychiatry (Universitat de Barcelona, 1988) and Legal Psychiatry (Complutense University of Madrid, 1994) . During her predoctoral training also served as assistant psychiatrist at Maricopa Medical Center (Phoenix, Arizona, USA) and was professor of nursing at the University of Arizona.
She has been devoted to postgraduate education and has been very productive in organizing courses, conferences and symposia since 2000. She has taught in several university postgraduate courses in psychology and in medicine. She was an Associated Professor at the Medical School of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) until March, 2015, when she moved to Andorra.
Her current research focuses on the biological basis of mental disorders, the suicide prevention and always in the gender perspective related to mental disorders. The result of this research has been published in numerous national and international journals.
She was President of the Board of the Catalan Society of Psychiatry and Mental Health, 2006-2009. She is a member of the Education and Research Committees of the International Association for Women's Mental Health and she is also a Corresponding Member of the American Psychiatric Association since 1997. Since the year 2010, she is the Director of the UPDATE for the Catalan Psychiatric Association.
Currently she conducts her clinical and management practice as a Head of the Mental Health Service at Hospital Nostra Senyora de Meritxell in Andorra.
María Luisa Imaz Gurrutxaga, obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Medicine at the University of the Basque (Spain) Country and completed a Psychiatry residency at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona (Spain). She received her Master’s Degree in Drug-Addictions at the University of Deusto (Spain), her Master’s Degree in Legal and Forensic Psychiatry at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain).
Currently she is a clinical research senior psychiatrist at the Psychiatry Service in the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona (Spain) in two psychiatric intervention programs integrating the gender perspective: the Perinatal Psychiatry Program Barcelona-CLINIC and the Prevention and Treatment of PTSD Program in women suffering sexual assault. She is involved in two research lines: one focused in diagnostic and treatment of perinatal affective disorders, especially bipolar disorder and puerperal psychosis; the other focused in developing and evaluating mental health interventions for victims of sexual violence. She is a member of the Catalan Research Workgroup on Women's Mental Health in the Catalan Society of Psychiatry and Mental Health and member of the International Marcé Society.
She is, also, a member of the Spanish Marcé Society (MARES) Executive (from 2011 to this day).
Anita Riecher-Rössler, MD PhD, is Professor of Psychiatry. She is specialised in psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, as well as in consultation and liaison psychiatry and in gerontopsychiatry. In 1998, she was the first woman to be appointed to a full chair for psychiatry in a German speaking country.
Her research interests are the field of schizophrenic psychoses and that of gender differences in mental disorders and mental disorders in women.
Her work in the field of schizophrenic psychoses has mainly been on the onset and the early detection of these disorders, but also on late onset schizophrenia.
Furthermore, she has worked on psychoneuroendocrinology and on mental disorders related to women’s reproductive functions, such as during pregnancy, the postpartum and in menopause. A further focus is on psychosocial risk factors for mental disorders in women, such as violence.
Her approach is a bio-psycho-social one, i.e. she always tries to consider all these aspects in the pathogenesis as well as the therapy of mentally ill persons.
Prof. Dr. med. Anita Riecher-Rössler, MD PhD FMH Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis DGPPT, Consultation and Liaison Psychiatry, Gerontopsychiatry and -psychotherapy University of BaselDr. Monica Sanchez obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Medicine at the University of Barcelona in 2004, and completed the Psychiatry residency in Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu in 2009. She is currently working as a psychiatrist at the Community Mental Health Center of Terrassa, Barcelona, where she is also involved in teaching as a supervisor of the resident training program since 2014.
Her research interests are gender differences in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, adverse effects in psychopharmacology, and dual diagnosis in psychiatry.
Her current work focuses on biomarkers and gender differences in bipolar disorders. She is a member of the Catalan Research Workgroup on Women’s Mental Health (Catalan Society of Psychiatry and Mental Health) and the Young Psychiatrists Group (Catalan Society of Psychiatry and Mental Health).