Dr. Bea Pászthy, pediatrician, child psychiatrist, family psychotherapist and associate professor of the 1st Department of Pediatrics, was awarded the Prima Prize in the Hungarian Science category. This also means that she is one of the nominees for this year’s Prima Primissima Award in the scientific field. This year’s Prima Primissima awardee will be chosen based on the decision of a professional jury and the results of a public vote.
Dr. Bea Pászthy graduated from Semmelweis University, she is a pediatrician, child psychiatrist, clinical pharmacologist and psychotherapist. In 2005 she founded the family-centered Department of Child Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the 1st Department of Pediatrics to treat children suffering from mental disorders. She developed the therapeutic protocol for severe eating disorders in children and established the first unit in Hungary for childhood eating disorders. She launched and is the organizer of graduate, resident and specialist training in the field of child psychiatry. She is a pioneer and specialist in bio-psycho-social patient care and an internationally renowned expert of psychosomatic diseases in childhood and adolescence.
Winning the Prima Prize is a great honor for me and I’m happy that my nomination for the Prima Primissima Award has driven more attention to child psychiatry and started a discourse on the mental health of children and families.
– said Dr. Bea Pászthy about the recognition. As a pediatrician, she is really proud of her patients who recovered.
“It is always inspirational to see families happily leave the clinic with their recovered child. It also makes me feel really happy, when I meet my former patients among my students or colleagues. This makes me feel that the long hours of therapy were worth it” , she said talking about the beauty of her work.
She is also proud of starting the first department of child psychiatry at Semmelweis University in 2005 with the help and support of Dr. Tivadar Tulassay. She also organized the education of the subject incorporating it into the curriculum of the undergraduate, resident specialist training programs, which have been a springboard for a lot of excellent specialists. She has been running student groups, resident seminars, practical child psychiatry training for pediatricians and organizes the congress of psychiatry and psychosomatic diseases for general practitioners.
Dr. Bea Pászthy works in all three fields of the university: patient care, education and research. She has been involved in several international and national collaborations to research mental illness in children.
“We developed sixteen professional guidelines to be used in child psychiatry in Hungary and it was a major breakthrough when these were published. At the same time, the infrastructural development of in- and outpatient care started in several rural towns as part of an EU grant.”, she said.
In the last decade and a half, anorexia nervosa has been the focus her therapeutic and research interest. She has already published a professional guideline on the subject and would like to develop the best possible therapeutic procedures.
“I would like to do as much as possible to destigmatize mental illness and to enable patients access specialist care more easily and without feeling ashamed. A process to reform child psychiatry specialist training has started and I am planning to work on the harmonization of this training program within Hungary and in the European Union. My biggest dream, however is to establish an independent and modern child psychiatry center in Hungary providing the highest professional care,” she said.
This year’s list of nominees for the 19th annual Prima Primissima Awards are people with exemplary achievements in Hungarian science, art, culture and sport. As in previous years, 30 winners have been selected in 10 categories. There are three winners in each category, and the members of the board will select 10 recipients of the Primissimas Awards by secret ballot.
In the category of Hungarian Science, the nominees for the Prima Primissima Award are Dr. Bea Pászthy, Dr. Éva Kondorosi, molecular biologist, and Dr. Ákos Egyed, historian.
Bernadett Bódi
Photo: Attila Kovács – Semmelweis University
Translation: Ágnes Raubinek
