Professor Warwick Middleton, MB BS, FRANZCP, MD, ISSTD President

I thought that I might share a semi-random assortment of the feedback you gave in respect to our recent 33rd Annual Conference in San Francisco: “Excellent meeting spaces, well-provisioned, good climate control” “San Francisco is one of my favorite cities to visit. My husband even joined me, and we made it into a mini-vacation. Go Giants!” “I found the practical application of neurobiology within the therapeutic relationship very helpful.” “It was also great to see Dan Siegel again, I loved the presentation by Mary Main and Erik Hesse; I especially enjoyed the LGBT trainings with Julie Graham – I thought they were terrific.” “The bag lunches in pre-conference were AWESOME! I’m sure it was expensive, but I would have liked snacks offered more consistently.” “The plenaries were fabulous — Mary Main et al., and Julie Graham were fabulous. I also liked having more 90-minute and 3 hour workshops and fewer diffuse paper sessions. Please continue that. Loved the international atmosphere with so many non-US attendees. Really enjoyed getting to go to San Francisco.” “SO MUCH FUN. World class presenters. And the information and approaches seem to be integrating more.” “I enjoyed the morning sessions. They were all impactful in my practice.” “Attending conferences such as ISSTD is essential to becoming and remaining sharp in the field. It’s like taking a multivitamin to maximize health and prevent burnout.” See The Conference Highlights I had a great time at our meeting in San Francisco. Congratulations to Kevin Connors and his Conference Committee, Therese Clemens and her hard-working Headquarters staff, as well as our many presenters, contributors and supporting organizations. Our meetings strive to be clinically relevant, informative, and fun. The attendance figure of 411 was the largest number attending an annual conference in years. In the year following our meeting in Orlando, our membership has grown by some 250 individuals andwe convened our largest-ever conference outside North America in November when we had 386 attend our Australian and New Zealand Regional Conference in Sydney. Twenty Australian colleagues made the substantial trip to take part in our San Francisco conference. Congratulations as well to the 2016 ISSTD Annual Award winners – announced at the conference Awards Dinner:

  In order to practice in the field of Complex Trauma/Dissociative Disorders, colleagues naturally desire having multiple reference points that indicate that working in this field is safe and career-enhancing. For quite a while now, our society has, been taking a particularly pro-active approach in respect to supporting initiatives that are new and which constructively advance our field, e.g. the collaborative work of our very active Scientific Committee chaired by Vedat Sar, our Regional Conference in Sydney (with conference co-chairs being Joan Haliburn and Martin Dorahy), communicating a rapid response to the media in respect to emergent events (via our Communications Committee chaired by Bob Slater), and the launching of a clinically oriented E-Journal (whose co-editors, Steve Frankel and Andreas Laddis have recently been appointed). Increasingly, we are seeing substantive and strategic scholarly publications co-authored by our Society members that are appearing in main-stream mental health journals. Aside from our 2017 Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. and our 35th anniversary Conference in Chicago in 2018, planning is underway for an Illinois-based regional conference in late 2017 as well as an ISSTD-convened, or co-convened, conferences in Canada, Brisbane, New York and Baltimore over the next 18 months. Our conferences are clinically relevant, informative and fun. The atmosphere is inclusive, respectful, and friendly. My eldest son Jordie who is a computer animator/3-D designer, and who has no professional involvement in the trauma field has now attended three ISSTD conferences without hearing a single paper. He enjoys the people, the atmosphere, the special events (e.g. the haunted ship event in Long Beach, the night tour of Alcatraz in San Francisco), and the other aspects of the vibrant social life associated with our conferences. Jordie is planning to come to our next meeting in Washington (March 30 – April 3, 2017). Our Society has a very active grouping of Committees and Task Forces, the Chairs of which meet regularly via teleconferences. We are always keen to hear feedback from our members and to encourage and support those that have an interest in becoming more involved in the work of the Society via becoming a member of one of its committees, task forces, special interest groups, or component groups. We are in the process of launching the E-Journal. Many members of our Society have recently published, or are in the process of publishing significant books for our field. Next year will see the first double Special Issue of the Society’s journal, the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation. If you aren’t at this point involved in the activities of a Society committee and you are interested in becoming more involved in the work of the ISSTD, please don’t hesitate to send me an email outlining your interests and skills. I welcome such communications. With very best wishes to all, Warwick warmid@tpg.com.au