From the President's Podium: Renew your 2014 PsySSA membership (if you were not register before. please register as a new member)

Message from the President, Prof David Maree

Welcome to 2014, an auspicious year for our country and our society.

I trust that you are all well rested, recharged and ready to embrace a year in which the country celebrates two decades of democracy and our society marks its own twentieth birthday. 

Of course, these two important milestones are intimately related. PsySSA was birthed in recognition of the watershed shifts that ushered in a free and democratic country in which the mental health needs of all its citizens were, for the first time in its history, regarded as equally important. In 1994, the country was fractured and its people damaged from years of pervasive oppression and violence. The establishment of a Society that took these tensions and deep scars seriously, mobilising its resources towards intervention was an essential ingredient in the reconstitution of South African society. 

Twenty years later much has changed but the early aspirations of 1994 remain significantly out of reach for most South Africans. PsySSA is needed as much now as it was in the year of its inception and so I would like to remind you to renew your membership for 2014.

Click here to renew your membership. 

Aside from realising the full potential of the Society’s new structures as they interface with new communication and outreach strategies and technologies, the highlight of the year will be the 20th Congress to be held in Durban from the 16th - 19th September. There, we will celebrate but also take critical stock of our achievements and shortcomings over the last 20 years in thinking about the directions of the Society and our country in the coming two decades. 

I look forward to a rewarding year with you in 2014.

David Maree
President