APPRC is held in Institute of Mental Health at Buangkok Green Medical Park, this is in collaboration with Woodbridge Hospital/ IMH’s 80th Anniversary. We welcome all participants to our hospital.

We have invited more than 104 speakers to cover 120 topics relevant to our care of patients with mental conditions. Psychiatric rehabilitation and mental wellness are key issues we have focused on. Numerous other partnering organizations and foreign participants will present their own work and winning philosophies. These will be distributed over 9 pre-conference workshops, 19 plenary speeches, 9 main symposiums and 45 parallel sessions in the conference.

This rich exchange of knowledge and meetings of more than 400 people will also mean logistic challenges for the organizing committee. We hope that everyone will understand the difficulties to run this conference smoothly. We will do our best to ensure everyone get to the right venue and the right session. Therefore we wish all participants will be able to benefit from this huge learning journey at APPRC.

The main conference will be held in lecture hall and 5 parallel rooms (Atrium, Seminar room, Kaizen room, Meeting room 3 and Meeting room 4).

Below are some facts on each component of the conference:

Pre-conference workshops (Mon –Tues)
9 main workshops to learn useful skills, taught by invited experts. Some of the workshops will have multiple speakers. Some will have different topics on the 2 days, please note this.
Each workshop will take up to 25 participants. Do not switch rooms as the slots are already allocated during registration. Please find out the room (venue) of the sessions early, or you can ask the conference ushers. Refreshments will be available outside your rooms.

Conference proper (Wed – Fri)
Plenary speakers (Lecture hall and broadcasted to 5 parallel rooms)
We have 19 distinguished international, regional or local plenary speakers
Each is given 15-20 min to give a concise overview of the topic they are speaking on
The talks are therefore not designed to be long lectures Networking is encouraged during interval periods.
Plenary speakers will present in the Lecture Hall (which sits 170 people) and broadcasted to all other rooms, we therefore apologize that not all participants will be able to be in the Lecture Hall due to space constraint. However all plenary speeches will be broadcasted to all the other rooms, We encourage IMH staff to give seats to non-IMH and overseas participants. Please go to any of the nearest rooms when lecture hall is full, to watch the broadcast of the plenary speakers.

When there are no plenary speeches – there will be a Main symposium in the lecture hall, and 5 parallel sessions running concurrently in the 5 parallel rooms. So choose the topic you want to attend and be at the right room before the session, there will be a 10 minute interval to change rooms. The rooms will be closed when it is full. Participants would then have to make it to the next available room quickly.

Symposiums (Lecture hall)
There are 9 main symposiums that bring together speakers discussing important topics from different perspective
Example – Rehabilitation of young offenders, Addiction, Elderly, Advocacy etc
Each Symposium is 1 hour and 15 min long and is held in the lecture hall (sits 170 people)
Each speaker in this Symposium will be allocated 15-20 min to give a quick overview
There will be a 15 min Q&A session after the whole Symposium.
Networking is encouraged during interval periods

Parallel Sessions
There will be 45 parallel sessions.
Each parallel session is 1 hour and 15 minutes (ie 75 min) long.
There will 2 components to each parallel session:
The main speaker will talk for 40 min on a major topic, followed by 10 min Q&A
This will be followed by 20 min short presentation on a free paper or a country presentation. A 5 min Q&A for the paper ends the parallel session.
There will be a chairperson in charge of the timing for each room. Speakers will need to be present at your talk early to check your slides and prepare for your talk.
Participants please identify the topic you want to attend early and its location (which can be either at level one or two).
A parallel session will allow participants to listen to a main topic of interest, followed by a paper or country presentation at the end. We do encourage participants to go for a topic you may not be familiar to learn something new.


Public Forum
There will be 2 free forums on Saturday. Please encourage your clients or public to attend. There will be limited seats as well. Free refreshments provided.
One is for Public – No Health without Mental Health (limited to 170 people)
One is for Caregivers and Consumers/patients – Journey towards Recovery (limited to 60 people)

Exhibition
There will be booths set up during the conference for organizations to create awareness of many efforts in mental healthcare. Consumers will also be given a booth to promote their arts, music CDs or books.

Hospital Museum and Tour
IMH Museum will be opened to all.
There will be short guided tours around IMH with guides to explain the different facilities and history on Friday after the end of conference.