Dear colleagues and friends,

The pandemic of COVID-19, that more or less has struck most of our countries, has influenced deeply our professional, social and personal life.

Since the beginning of the virus outbreak, we were hoping that the situation would ameliorate fast, thus giving us the exiting opportunity to welcome the EABCT community in Athens. However, to this date, there are still quite a few uncertainties about a possible second virus outbreak in the fall, not to mention the existing restrictions related to air travel.

Given the above and taking into account that everybody’s safety should be our top priority, the Organizing Committee was led to the decision to “move” the congress online.

We are determined to use every advantage that the technology can offer to us in order to be able to stay connected in safety even if we are not able to meet in person. We firmly believe that in these difficult times the role of the mental health expert is to provide a second line of defense against the pandemic by helping people to deal with the intense negative emotions and the mental exhaustion that both the pandemic and the prolonged isolation are causing. CBT is an evidence based intervention that can be proved to be valuable in our struggle against the effect of the pandemic on the mental health of the population; and we believe our congress can be an important contribution towards this goal.

We would like to thank you all for your continuous inspiring support during the past few months and ask you to stay connected with us until we virtually meet in Athens, 2-5/9/2020

Fragiskos Gonidakis
Congress President