Health ministry launches Korea's first addiction prevention and recovery week

South Korea's health ministry said Monday it will hold the country's first Addiction Prevention, Treatment and Recovery Week from Nov. 10 to 13, bringing treatment specialists, researchers and international experts together in a single programme.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare said the four-day event, organised with the National Center for Mental Health, the Korean Academy of Addiction Psychiatry and the Addiction Forum, is meant to frame addiction as a public health problem rather than a matter of individual will. Officials pointed to the rise of drug addiction as a social issue and said enforcement and punishment alone have not been enough.

A symposium on addiction and mental health at the National Center for Mental Health opens the week on Nov. 10. Sessions there will compare substance addictions such as alcohol and drugs with behavioural addictions including gambling and gaming, and argue that addiction services need to be distinct from general mental health care. A second track will look at institutional and policy tasks, hearing from regional treatment and protection centres and reviewing national policy direction. A separate workshop the same day will feed the results of this year's evaluation of local addiction management centres back to the centres, with case management and supervision as the focus.

The week's international programme falls on Nov. 12. Marc N. Potenza, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University's School of Medicine and the incoming president of the International Society of Addiction Medicine, will give a lecture at the centre on the past 30 years of addiction research and its future direction. Later that day, at Omnibus Park in Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, Potenza will speak at an international seminar on how behavioural addiction is shifting in the digital era. Anja Busse of the World Health Organization will present on global alcohol policy and the WHO SAFER initiative, a programme introduced in 2018 to cut alcohol-related harm and deaths.

The week also includes an academic conference marking the 30th anniversary of the Korean Academy of Addiction Psychiatry.

Lee Sun-young, who heads the ministry's mental health policy bureau, said the government plans to expand treatment infrastructure and strengthen referral links so that patients receive care when they need it. She said the week would be used to gather expert advice on shoring up the foundation of the government's treatment and rehabilitation policy.

Nam Yun-young, director of the National Center for Mental Health, said effective responses require an accurate understanding of what addiction is and a system in which specialist treatment and sustained recovery support continue after it. He said he hoped the symposium would connect experience from treatment settings with national policy and research findings.

Ministry documents for the event also list strengthening restrictions on alcohol availability and stepping up drunk-driving enforcement among its policy directions, alongside the treatment and recovery agenda.