Building national associations for psychiatry trainees: The MENTA recipe for success

Abstract

European Federation of Psychiatric Trainees (EFPT) is an umbrella organization for national psychiatric trainee associations in Europe, aiming to develop collaboration between psychiatric trainees. EFPT states that organised trainee interest is crucial in promoting high quality psychiatric training, therefore it promotes that both general adult psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry trainees are represented by national trainee association in each European country. The Maintaining and Establishing a National Trainee Association Working Group (MENTA WG), a permanent EFPT working group, has been created to assist trainees in building a local trainee organization. MENTA WG supports organising meetings, helps manage the problems of functioning of an association, sends letters of support to national decision makers, helps prepare the organization's bylaws and facilitates the process of application for full EFPT membership. The group also helps reactivate the inactive associations and assists them in expansion and developing new initiatives. MENTA WG maintains close collaboration with the European Psychiatric Association Early Career Psychiatrists Committee (EPA ECPC) Task Force on Meetings and Associations and other organizations dedicated to early career psychiatrists, such as the Young Psychiatrists’ Network. In the last few years, due to the work done within MENTA WG, the EFPT family has grown and welcomed new official members, such as: Poland, Spain and Slovakia. Currently, we are planning on supporting trainees in Moldova, Bulgaria and Kosovo to establish new official organizations in these countries. We also expand our activities beyond Europe and offer counselling for psychiatric trainees from such countries as Australia or South Africa.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.