Department of Psychiatry

Faculty of Medicine, School of Health Sciences
University of Ioannina, Stavrou Niarhou Av., Ioannina 455 10,  Greece

 

Konstantinos Kotsis is an Assistant Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He graduated from Medical School of the University of Ioannina and continued his studies receiving his Master’s Degree in Social Adult and Child Psychiatry. He has awarded his PhD at the Department of Psychiatry of Medical School of the University of Ioannina, where he assessed the role of illness perceptions in psychological distress and Health-Related Quality of Life in patients with rheumatological disorders. He worked for the Greek National Health System in a General Hospital’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department where his main areas of clinical work were Consultation - Liaison Child Psychiatry and Telepsychiatry for children and adolescents. He has also experience in clinical work with children suffering from chronic illness as well as with children with special educational needs.

Konstantinos Kotsis has completed his training in Family Therapy and he is member of the Hellenic Systemic Thinking and Family Therapy Association.

He has published peer-reviewed papers in the field of psychosomatic medicine and he is also a reviewer in several scientific journals.

He is President of the Hellenic Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

"I want to be part of the European joint efforts and collaborate with other child and adolescent psychiatrists in Europe. Each country has its own experiences. The Greek/Hellenic society would like to continue to bring its experiences to the ESCAP board and share with other countries to build a more stable European network. 

In Greece, we have a long-standing experience of various mental health policies. From the official psychiatric reform started in 1984 (with the European Community Regulation 815) that shifted the psychiatric care to a community-oriented psychiatry, to the changes that we were obliged to perform in the last years due to the financial and humanitarian crisis. In these difficult years (no funding, lack of personnel, expenditure cuts, loss of income, unemployment), we managed to overcome these barriers and not only help children of our country but also to cover the mental health needs of the refugees and to advocate through certain policies for an equal and fair position in Greek society. Therefore, we want to share these experiences and the knowledge that we have gained through these difficult years with other countries and vice versa.

As a new Board member, I want to share my enthusiasm and my thoughts about our young colleagues, which I believe are the future of European CAP. We need to invest in young clinicians to increase our networks and generate new initiatives. We need to establish through collaboration similar training programs for all countries (Greece follows the UEMS curriculum and recently updated it according to the latest UEMS suggestions). Moreover, we should take advantage of the new technologies in CAP and as a board member, I will try to contribute to this.

I believe that investment in young colleagues (and in technologies) can empower and ensure the future of CAP in Europe in order to be able to support the children of  Europe".