The history of Australian psychiatry is entwined with the impact of European (British) invasion and settlement, initially in 1788, to form penal colonies to alleviate the overcrowding of English jails, which generated a masculine-dominated, individualistic culture. As European settlement in Australia expanded, the colonisers tried to come to terms with this remote, vast landscape and fought over land and resources with the original Aboriginal inhabitants, who had been there between 40000 and 60000 years. Australian psychiatry was profiled in a previous article in International Psychiatry (issue 10, October 2005).

Coercion is recognised as a problem in health services around the world. Very little is known about the use and utility of coercive measures in psychiatry and other medical specialties in India, although the existing evidence supports the view that coercion is widely used. In February 2013 experts from India and Europe came together in Mysore, India, for an international symposium on coercion. A Declaration was drafted, discussed and ratified which defines coercive measures for the Indian context and which outlines ways to minimise coercion in medical settings in India. This paper describes the main points of the Declaration.

Coercion remains a dominant theme in mental healthcare and a source of major concern. While the presence of coercion is ubiquitous internationally, it varies significantly in nature and degree in different countries and is influenced by a variety of factors. Recent reports have raised concerns about physical restraint and the increasing use of legislation in high-income countries. At the same time, a recent Human Rights Watch report on pasung (the practice of tying or restricting movement more generally) in Indonesia has served to highlight the plight of many in middle- and lower-income countries who are subject to degrading and dehumanising ‘treatment’.

Undergraduate psychiatric education is essential for the training of medical students and for their recruitment into psychiatry. A significant shortage of graduates choosing a career in psychiatry has been recently documented, and this trend might have many causes. When medical students have positive experiences of teaching, elective placements and exposure to psychiatric patients, their attitudes towards psychiatry are significantly better. Therefore, there is a need to improve the quality of undergraduate training courses in psychiatry. Innovative teaching strategies are suggested, including the use of movies, virtual reality, simulated patients and multiprofessional training wards.

Mental health services in Cambodia required rebuilding in their entirety after their destruction during conflict in the 1970s. During the late 1990s there was rapid growth and development of professional mental health training and education. Currently, basic mental healthcare is available primarily in urban areas and is provided by a mixture of government, non-government and private services. Despite the initial rapid growth of services and the development of a national mental health strategy in 2010, significant challenges remain in achieving an acceptable, standardised level of mental healthcare nationally.

Worldwide, mental disorders are on the increase (Gadit, 2007) and an estimated 10-20% of children have one or more mental or behavioural problems (Park, 2002). There is an urgent and serious need to pay attention to the mental health needs of children in low- and middle-income countries (Rahman et al, 2000). The initial survey for the World Health Organization's Atlas project (Sherer, 2002) showed that 41% of countries surveyed had no mental health policy and 28% had no separate budget for mental health.

This paper summarises the impact of a new triage process on referral prioritisation and waiting times in a community specialist child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) in Qatar. The process involves initial review of referrals by a CAMHS nurse to ensure that there is adequate clinical information, obtaining additional information from patients/families and referring clinicians by the psychiatric triage team, when necessary, followed by prioritisation and allocation of accepted referrals. The new process reduced the acceptance of inappropriate referrals, ensured prioritisation of referrals and significantly improved the service's compliance with waiting-time deadlines.

Mental health service provision for youth within the juvenile justice system remains a topic of contemporary global discourse. To bring perspectives from under-resourced regions, we examine the current limitations of some globalised models for mental health services within the juvenile justice system in Nigeria. The important multi-systemic steps needed to reposition the system for modern mental health promotion and services are highlighted.

Terrorism is often construed as a well-thought-out, extreme form of violence to perceived injustices. The after effects of terrorism are usually reported without understanding the underlying psychological and social determinants of the terrorist act. Since ‘9/11’ Pakistan has been at the epicentre of both terrorism and the war against it. This special paper helps to explain the psychosocial perspective of terrorism in Pakistan that leads to violent radicalisation. It identifies the terrorist acts in the background of Pakistan's history, current geopolitical and social scenario. The findings may also act as a guide on addressing this core issue.

For over a decade, concerted efforts have been made in Europe to reform mental health services and move away from institutions to community-based models of care, supported by international policy statements, good practice examples and research evidence. Progress has been uneven. So what is the status of mental healthcare across the World Health Organization European Region, and what factors support, or detract from, such progress?

As defined by the World Health Organization, the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR), given its special geopolitical situation and internal/external conflicts, faces an increase in illegal activities such as drug production and trafficking, highlighting the need for a comprehensive understanding of the substance use situation. On the basis of a review of published papers between 2015 and 2021 we briefly review substance use in the EMR with special focus on the emerging drugs pertinent to this region, namely tramadol, captagon and khat.

The mental health of prisoners in the USA is affected by American history: Dorothea Dix's 1830s campaign; the Civil War and slavery; presidential interventions; the Great Depression; and the introduction of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. In 1934, the ratio of prisoners to mental hospital patients was 0.4; now, it is 3:1, with states varying from 10:1 to 1:1. Those states with the highest ratios also have the highest rates of imprisonment and the lowest expenditures on mental health. Litigation is likely to improve mental health services in prisons and to keep people who are mentally ill out of prisons.

Sweden has a unique opportunity to identify and follow up women presenting with, or at risk for, perinatal mental health problems and disorders because universal screening programmes are provided by its primary healthcare system. Although they are implemented across almost the entire population, screening programmes are not necessarily leading to effective interventions because the multidisciplinary perinatal mental healthcare teams that provide for the assessment and treatment of moderate to severe disorders are very few in number and must be increased. In particular, efforts to reach immigrant parents must be intensified to achieve equal quality of care for all.

Almost 5 million Syrians have been registered as refugees since the conflict started in 2011. Their mental health and psychosocial needs continue to grow as the situation at home gets more complicated. Syrian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and mental health professionals have been offering their support to help meet these needs. They have set up various centres and teams on the ground that focus their efforts on the most needy individuals. They train and supervise healthcare volunteers, encourage self-management and build on people's resilience. These NGOs require support to deal with the consequences of this unprecedented crisis.

Substance use has become a major threat to health and human development in many European countries. In 23 out of 28 countries participating in the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD), there was a constant and substantial increase in substance use among secondary-school students between the years 1995 and 2003 (Hibell et al, 2003). Iceland experienced a similar upward trend in substance use (Sigfusdottir et al, 2008). Throughout the 1990s, the use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs increased steadily among 15- and 16-year-olds. In 1998, approximately 17% of 16-year-olds had tried hashish, which was the highest frequency to be measured in Iceland, and over 80% reported that they had used alcohol once or more in their lives (Thorlindsson et al, 1998).

There is robust evidence that electroconvulsive therapy is an effective treatment for some mental illnesses. Despite this, its use remains controversial and is declining in some countries, with a consequent loss of skills and knowledge. This, and the view of it as a ‘treatment of last resort’, may undermine its sustainability.

This paper will focus on the current state of mental health services in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and reflect on the various public health, socio-economic and psychosocial factors that have a major impact on the mental health needs of the population. It is to be borne in mind that the services described in this paper are in a state of rapid change, as the country is witnessing one of the fastest rates of development in the world.

Zambia, previously called Northern Rhodesia, was a colony of Great Britain until 1964, when it gained independence and changed its name. It is a landlocked country located in southern Africa and shares its borders with Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Congo and Angola. It has an area of 752 612 km2, about three times the size of Britain, but a population of only 12 million.

The clinical practice of psychiatry should incorporate a biopsychosocial model of illness, acknowledging both cultural and social influences on the patient's experience. Medical humanities include a number of academic disciplines that complement the clinical practice of psychiatry. The medical profession, including psychiatry, has a social responsibility to study the psychosocial context within which people become ill and have to be treated. Although the biopsychosocial model of illness has strong theoretical foundations, its application in clinical practice is limited. A new approach would be to restructure medical student teaching to include medical humanities in the first year, and to share such education with other professions.