Greetings

Department of Psychiatry
Professor Ichiro Kusumi, M.D., Ph.D.

Coming into the 21st century, we tend to seek for mental sufficiency rather than material want.

In such a social variation, importance of the psychiatry in medicine and medical care has been rising more and more.

The psychiatry covers an extensive region from the physical side to mental side of human including psychological, social and cultural sides.

Our department has a long history of about 90 years and produced a lot of human resources who contribute to psychiatric researches and psychiatric practices.

Our department is actively working with education (cultivation of human resources), study (elucidation of pathophysiology and development of new treatment) and treatment (enhancement of medical treatment) as a base.

Moreover, we share the unlimited passion for psychiatry and psychiatric practices, strongly wishing their development in the future.

Our department traditionally has provided the environment where the members can play an active part to their heart's content, respecting each other and maintaining a free atmosphere and warm human relations.

For education, our department is equipped with a system that offers close and detailed guidance to students, graduate student and residents on a one-to-one basis and educates them in a good balance systematically.

For research, both basic and clinical studies are performed in a good balance.

For clinical aspect, our department has the 1st or 2nd largest number of outpatients and inpatients of all departments in Hokkaido University Hospital, and therefore we have the best chance to experience various cases and moreover keep the highest treatment level in Japan.

Our mission is to contribute to the conquest of disablities in patients with mental disorders at a maximum through progress of the psychiatric practices with the basic and clinical studies as a base.

As a vision for it, we aim at "forming the strongest multi-skill team which provides the best psychiatric practices, and cultivating medical doctors and researchers who are capable of contributing to the society through the process that transmits evidence as a foundation for treatment to the world".

In order to realize it, we set five goals, which are standardization of treatment and improvement in team force by the multi-skill team, development of biological markers to be used for diagnosis, development and spread of new effective therapies with the least side effects, well-balanced cultivation of psychiatrists through consistent education before (students) and after graduation (residents), and contribution to local psychiatric practices.

For achieving these goals, we make advances for the future with "No hurry, but no rest" and "Be always gentle" as a policy.