Published: October 2022

Keywords:
Dimitris Anagnostopoulos, practice of psychiatry for children and adolescents, trauma, globalisation, crisis, mental health, new pathologies, pandemic, telemedicine, new communication technologies.

Dimitris C. Anagnostopoulos

Emeritus Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. Hellenic Educational and Therapeutic Centre for the Mental Health of Children and Younge People. danagnos@ekthepsy.gr

Abstract

For Petros Polychronis

My relationship with Petros begins in the past years of our university life in the dictatorship with the common anxiety of how to get out of the darkness into the light.

Since then, a long course of coexistence has been formed in the path of Child Psychiatry from its first steps until today. His contribution was foundational throughout its whole development and in all fields. Perhaps, it has not been seen by everyone since he is characterised by the humbleness and discretion of his personality. It is undoubtedly, though, recorded within his clinical, educational, and institutional work.

We developed a continuous and fruitful "dialogue" with Petros, regardless of our natural closeness and coexistence. From the time we were under the same roof of "Agia Sophia", when we were organising the first and only, for several decades, department for inpatient hospitalisation for children with psychiatric problems, in a general pediatric hospital, under the guidance of Giannis Tsiantis. Till our collaboration with cases in our private practice. Having several intermediate stops in scientific institutions (e.g., conferences, workshops) and constant action for the psychiatric reformation. Here, I need to underline his essential contribution, recalling his characteristic phrase, "the asylum is within us, in our minds".

It was Petros who, in the euphoria of the era of financing and the creation of new structures, showed the importance of the Subject for the success of any changes. A fact that we realised along the way and later on.

Petros was and will continue to be – as long as I continue in life – a valuable friend, a great collaborator, a pioneering colleague, a wise "interlocutor", a dedicated comrade in the good cause of child psychiatry for the promotion and safeguarding of health in a democratic society without discriminations and exclusions of the "weak". A remarkable Man.

The text following is a small contribution to his memory.