IX World Congress of Psychiatry

Extract

The President of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), Dr Jorge Costa de Silva, being Brazilian, this congress was the first to be held south of the equator and in a local winter. The choice of venue caused more then usual anticipatory anxiety because Rio, the largest of all tropical cities, accommodating ten million people who unify by calling themselves Cariocas but whose economic welfare is widely disparate, has a reputation for mugging rather than begging. In the event delegates were made so security conscious and the city administrators allocated so many hundreds of police to prevent trouble that there were only three or four materially untoward incidents. One story is that a delegate ventured to the beach wearing bathing trunks and sun glasses and returned with neither.