Dr Angelica Ortiz de Gortari Event, , , , , , ,

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2019!

I hope this year you give yourself time to do at least one of the things that fill your life with happiness, but you have postponed for a while!

2018 was the year where I focused my energy on spreading the knowledge of GTP among my colleagues in academia. Curiously, I ended up traveling longer distances as never before, on several occasions to USA to Yale and Harvard Medical School, and the year started with the conference MindCare hosted at the MIT.

It was great to have the opportunity to share my research at two prominent mental health hospitals in the USA; the McLean Hospital and the Connecticut Mental Health Center.  These visits together with presenting my research at the World Congress of Psychiatry hosted in Mexico City connected me emotionally with the work of my father, psychiatrist Angel Ortiz Escudero.

I have always tried to encourage young people to follow their passion and to take the topic they choose for their thesis seriously because you never know where these first steps can take you. My father’s legacy has inspired me to innovate and pursue my professional passion, just as he did, so allow me to take a short break from the highlights of GTP and tell you about my father’s work. His seminal thesis was the foundation for establishing the first farm for the mentally ill based on occupational ergo-therapy in Latin-America “Granja de Recuperacion Mental San Pedro del Monte, a model institution that was replicated in other countries. His work substantially contributed to the psychiatry in Mexico, most importantly it dignified and humanized the treatment of psychiatric patients in the 1940s.

Continuing with the highlights of GTP, I finally had the chance to return to my dream city after 18 years, Vancouver and visit the University of British Columbia. Amazing, charming people and nature filled me with energy and hope.

This visit was followed by a talk on the psychology of video games and GTP to young people at the Science World at Telus World of Science in Vancouver.

Toward the end of the year, I was very interested to assist and participate in the Technology in Psychiatry summit at Harvard, and I very excitingly share also my research with professor Stickgold and his team. He has investigated GTP under hypnagogic states at Harvard Medical School.

My last trip of the year was a speed visit to London to share my research with inspiring colleagues experts on hallucination and psychosis at the ECHR meeting. A visit that brought back good memories of my time in the UK.

In 2018, my research on GTP was featured in diverse areas, highlighting the multiple applications and possibilities of GTP.

Other exciting events of 2018 included:

  • An experimental research study on GTP was finally launched.
  • One of my students obtained funding for doing his PhD on GTP.
  • I continue collecting data on our longitudinal project on esports at Nordic schools (eSportNS) to understand the effects of esports education and GTP.

A big pile data is pending to be analysed and papers to be published. My relevant publications of the year included: