RCPsych - President's Lecture delivered by Professor Dame Sue Bailey, OBE, DBE

Back to the future - on the road less travelled

We all know that where we live will impact radically on the quality of our lives. Across the world the challenge of achieving values and evidenced based, affordable, sustainable health care for all, has become so overwhelming we increasingly risk becoming crisis junkies.

Are we currently condemning prevention and sustainability‎ to the too difficult to do box?

How do we deal with diverse views as to whether increased utilisation of Artificial Intelligence in health care will make all things possible, threaten the livelihoods of the health workforce or alleviate their work burden, remove all semblance of citizen confidentiality and rights or deliver the data patterns, that can advance the science of medicine and improve patient outcomes?

As health workers are we truly working in partnership with patients and populations to Choose Wisely, sharing clinical decision-making ‎with those we serve?

I hope to illustrate through words and pictures the benefits of a whole systems social identity approach to health and care, to position mental health centre stage in a conversation about how street by street, family by family, we can create a healthy, health creating society where the children of today can transition through adolescence with the well-being needed for their future roles and lives. ‎Elders should not be seen as a burden on society and adolescents should be better understood as we both adapt to our changing brains, whether my "forgetfulness" or my grandson's "careless inquisitiveness".