Meeting Report
Opening Remarks by Barry Reisberg, IPA President, at Istanbul Meeting

On behalf of the International Psychogeriatric Association, I would like to welcome everyone to this meeting. IPA is the premier psychogeriatric organization in the world, comprising approximately 1100 members from nearly 70 nations. Our goals are to advance psychogeriatric services, education, and knowledge throughout the globe.

Among IPA's major activities are its Congresses, which are held every 2 years. Recent Congresses have been held in Jerusalem, Sydney, Berlin, and Rome. Our next Congress, in Vancouver, Canada from August 15-20, 1999, promises to be a magnificent event and I urge all of you to attend. IPA also co-sponsors bi-annual regional meetings such as this. Future meetings will be held in Munich from September 13-18, 1998 and Beijing from April 12-14, 1999. Additionally, IPA convenes special meetings. Topics of recent special meetings included the Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease, in Geneva; Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia, in Washington, DC; and Outcome Methodologies for Pharmacologic Trials in Mild, Moderate, and Severe Alzheimer's Disease, in New York.

Another major IPA activity is its Research Awards in Psychogeriatrics, for which a bi-annual competition is held. IPA also publishes a highly respected journal, International Psychogeriatrics, which is indexed in Index Medica, and a lively newsletter, the IPA Bulletin, which reports on psychogeriatric issues around the globe.

Clearly, it behooves all clinicians with an interest in psychogeriatrics to join IPA, and I urge any of you who are not members to join the organization during this meeting.

Istanbul is an ideal locale for an IPA meeting. Many of the most fundamental discoveries in physiology, neurology, and psychogeriatrics were made here in Turkey. Also, investigative medical research began in this country. Galen, working in Pergamon, near Izmir, in the second century AD, is credited with having been the first to demonstrate that the arteries contain blood and not air, and that it is the kidneys which produce urine. Neurologically, Galen demonstrated that speech is controlled by the brain, not the heart, and that it is the brain which, through nerves, controls movement. Pergamon, where Galen developed the first true scientific investigation research center, was a major center of scholarship in Hellenic and Roman times -- so much so that the Ptolemies outlawed the use of papyrus in Pergamon because its library was becoming competitive with Alexandria, whereupon the innovative people of Pergamon invented parchment.

Another physician in this country began psychogeriatrics in the second century AD. Arataeus of Capadocia, a modern and ancient province of Turkey, was the first in the medical literature to list old age as a cause of dementia. Interestingly, Arataeus's medical text was lost for 1500 years, until the Renaissance. After its rediscovery, it once again became a best seller. Despite this textual loss, Arataeus's tradition of identifying old age as a cause of dementia was carried forward throught the ages, until this day.

Another major medical contribution belongs to Istanbul as well. It was here that classical Greco-Roman medical knowledge was uniquely preserved for more than a thousand years, until the Renaissance. Modern Istanbul is a uniquely appropriate place for IPA's meeting. This is the only city in the world that sits in both Asia and Europe, and persons here travel between Europe and Asia on a daily basis. Similarly, this city combines the best of the East with the best of the West. Consequently, Istanbul's reality provides a model for IPA's goals, to comfortably integrate the efforts of all nations, to draw upon the best work from all nations, and to achieve better mental health for the aged everywhere

So, on behalf of IPA, I would like to thank Professor Eker and the Turkish Society of Psychogeriatrics for making this joint meeting a reality and for bringing us together in this wonderful, illustrious fabled setting.