This issue is about leadership. Different kinds and different aspects of it: leadership as a part of management, leadership as an important part in your own life, leadership in medicine, and leadership in psychiatry, etc. Together with the multiply voices of our authors I would like to add few thoughts about the leadership in Nordic Psychiatric Associations (NPA). As I think that NPA was created to take leadership in Nordic area, including Scandinavian countries, and Baltic countries.
The idea behind, probably, was similar goals, similar problems, and similar possibilities that could be shared together with certain differences that makes collaboration creative and not boring. Meeting of representatives from each country is an exciting process of shared decision making: what to do, and how to do.
And this was the topic of the board meeting on November 26, 2021, when representatives of member countries met in a Zoom meeting to talk about the goals of a new board that started its activities in May, 2021, - just before the Nordic Congress of Psychiatry took place in Finland, in June. It was a meeting where we concluded the results and discussed the lessons from the Nordic Congress, and this time we had to decide how we should proceed as we want to have a great event in 2024 – Nordic Congress of Psychiatry in Riga, Latvia. It is our mutual responsibility – not only Latvians (!) – to make this event happen: great place to meet, have clinical discussions and scientific excitement, social events, and to do all this in very unpredictable times. It also means that we must tolerate certain uncertainty probably till the very day of the congress, as many things could happen. Finnish Psychiatric association was the first to meet this challenge this year, they have done a wonderful job.
So, to conclude. To me the leadership in Nordic psychiatric associations is sharing – problems, ideas, and fun, doing – even if there no certainty that it will work, doing together and including all associations on equal basis. And, of course, tolerating something that is a strong feature of nowadays – uncertainty. □