In this issue we sail to three countries that provide the Atlantic border at the western end of Europe: France, Ireland and Portugal.

Although mental health legislation has existed in India since the mid-19th century, it has gone through various changes over the years and the Mental Health Care Bill 2013 has generated a lot of debate and criticism. Despite its shortcomings, the general expectation is that this bill will usher in a new era of proper care and allow people with mental disorders to lead a dignified life.

Bulgaria has never had a separate law on mental health. Issues such as mandatory treatment, guardianship and legal capacity were regulated in the People's Health Act, which was in force until 2005, when it was replaced by a new Health Act. That Act has a chapter relating specifically to mental health, and this article describes its provisions.

The French Republic has had four laws governing the detention of people with a mental illness. The first dates from 1838 and remained in place until 1990. The most recent one was issued on 27 September 2013; it confirmed the role of the judge and strengthened the legal procedures. This new French mental health law is an attempt to find a balance between the protection of patients' rights and the need for treatment.

Continued efforts to produce appropriate mental health legislation in Pakistan led to the Mental Health Ordinance of 2001. However, with the 18th amendment to the constitution and devolution of health responsibilities to the provincial governments, it became the task of the provinces to pass appropriate mental health legislation through their respective assemblies. Currently the mental health legislative picture is fragmented and unsatisfactory. Only the provinces of Sindh and Punjab have a mental health act in place and there is an urgent need for similar legislative frameworks in other provinces to protect the rights of those with mental illness.

Brunei's new mental health legislation was implemented on 1 November 2014. This is a much needed and long overdue development which has required significant multi-agency consultation and commitment. This paper describes how the 2014 Mental Health Order was prepared and provides a summary of its contents. The future direction and challenges facing its full implementation are discussed.

This paper discusses the services and treatments that are offered in Montenegro to persons who are mentally ill. A short history is given. The law on the protection of the rights of patients who are mentally ill is described, along with the regulations governing voluntary and forced treatment. An action plan for promoting mental health has been partly already realised but some of its aims still need to be accomplished.

The article examines the current state of mental healthcare systems in countries of Eastern Europe and derives implications for future research and service development. Analysis of available statistics from the World Health Organization's Mental Health Atlas suggests the need for better-quality data collection. Nonetheless, there appear to be insufficient resources allocated to mental health, lack of involvement of service users in policy-making and, to a large extent, systems continue to rely on mental hospitals. Based on the data presented, a set of directions for future reforms was drafted.

This article provides a brief overview of the legislation that has been enacted in Ireland with respect to mental health, in particular the 2001 Mental Health Act. Although that Act was a positive step towards developing an Irish mental health service that protects the human rights of service users, a number of concerns remain, including issues related to consent and capacity, involuntary out-patient treatment and admission, the adversarial nature and timing of tribunals, and the lack of safeguards for voluntary patients.

Despite all the internal and external criticisms of mental health services in Libya, they remain underdeveloped across the country. The World Health Organization has made efforts to improve the country's mental health services; however, until a stable government is formed, patients with mental illness will continue to be deprived of their basic needs.

Fiji's Mental Treatment Act 1940 had become outdated, in part because it concentrated on treatment within a psychiatric hospital. The Mental Health Decree 2010 covers not only in-patient treatment but also the promotion of mental health, the prevention of mental illness, and the community-based and rehabilitative aspects of mental healthcare, as well as human rights issues.

This paper describes the challenges in starting a service for the diagnosis of and intensive therapeutic intervention for children with autism in a provincial town in western Greece (Messolonghi). Personnel had to be trained, the community had to be educated to accept and use the new service, and stigma had to be dealt with. Currently, fully developed 10 years after the beginning of the effort, in any one week the Day Centre serves on average 35 children with autism and 20 children with specific language impairment. The treatment programme runs along behavioural lines and the results are presently encouraging. Of 32 children referred consecutively to the Centre, after 5 years eight (25%) were attending regular school classes without a diagnosis of autism and eight (25%) with milder symptoms were attending classes with academic assistance. The limited impact of the Centre on the wider community is discussed.

New Zealand has an established history of mental health legislation that sits within a framework of human rights, disability and constitutional protections. We outline a brief history of mental health legislation in New Zealand since its inception as a modern state in 1840. The current legislation, the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992, defines mental disorder and the threshold for compulsory treatment. We describe its use in clinical practice and the wider legal and constitutional context which psychiatrists need to be aware of in their relationships with patients.

A woman in the care of the author 40 years ago was reported to have been sleeping for 2 days. We treated her condition as conversion hysteria. Her private psychiatrist was the renowned R. D. Laing; he was unhappy with our line of management, on the grounds of the arbitrariness of the diagnosis, the labelling of the woman with a diagnosis of hysteria and the treatment of the patient without her consent. In retrospect, I wonder if she was in a state of yogic sleep (yoga nidra).

This paper details the grounds for compulsory treatment, compulsory admissions in an emergency department and compulsory out-patient treatment in Portugal. Portuguese mental health legislation has improved significantly over recent years, with enhanced safeguards, rapid and rigorous review and clear criteria for compulsory treatment, although much remains to be done, especially in relation to the ‘move into the community’.

There is a widening mental health treatment gap for children and adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa. The region has few economic or human resources dedicated to the mental health of children and young people. The World Health Organization's Mental Health Gap Action Plan and the push for mental health to be included in the Millennium Development Goals have raised the profile of child mental health but comparatively few studies have estimated prevalence rates or assessed needs or tested interventions in African countries. In most countries there is no clear pathway to access treatment, especially in-patient facilities. This article considers these issues from clinical, educational and research perspectives.

Chile has been successful in integrating mental health and primary care. This paper describes the Chilean mental health service in primary care and the experience of scaling up a depression treatment programme. A new mental health plan is due to be introduced in 2016.

This paper describes an innovative institution, Capacitación y Desarrollo Integral AC (CADI – Comprehensive Training and Development), created in Mexico to develop evidence-based interventions grounded in the principles of inclusion, independence, social and health equity that promote the well-being of persons with intellectual developmental disorder older than 14 years.