Prof. Błażej Misiak, MD, PhD is a specialist of psychiatry and works at Wroclaw Medical University, Poland (Department of Psychiatry, Division of Consultation Psychiatry and Neuroscience). He defended his PhD thesis in 2015 at Wroclaw Medical University and published over 100 papers in international journals. His main interests include genetics and epigenetics of schizophrenia, inflammation in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, early intervention in psychosis, clinical and biological correlates of childhood trauma in psychotic disorders. He received several prestigious awards, including, i.e. the European Colleage of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Fellowship Award, the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP) Young Investigator Award or the START Scholarship provided by the Foundation for Polish Science.

At the cross-roads of oral and mental health: Emerging concepts and clinical implications

It is now clearly apparent that individuals with mental disorders, especially those with severe mental illness, have reduced life expectancy, mostly due to comorbid somatic health impairments. Apart from cardiovascular diseases, these comorbidities include, i.e., poor oral health characteristics. Accumulating evidence suggests that this association might be bidirectional and covers a number of social, psychological, behavioural and biological processes. Interestingly, it has been shown that poor oral health associated with altered microbiome alterations and subclinical inflammation might be causally related to the development of some mental disorders. Nevertheless, effective and scalable interventions targeting the burden of oral health impairments in people with mental disorders have not been developed so far. This lecture will focus on specific mechanisms linking mental and oral health. Moreover, directions for the field to develop effective interventions at the level of public and individual health will be provided.