We are now seeing in clinical practice a generation of young women who are referred for psychiatric treatment by their parents because they are rebelling against society's cultural norms but it is often apparent that women fear their families finding out that they are seeking psychiatric help. Despite improvements in the cultural understanding of women's right to equality, there remain deeply rooted practices and cultural norms that continue to adversely affect women's mental health and well-being. Physical abuse, for instance, is rarely reported, for fear of shaming the family, or of retaliation with further abuse. Mental health services in many countries in the Middle East are undergoing reform, but little research has been done into gender differences in service delivery or needs.

Reported rates of child sexual abuse in China fall at the lower end of the range found in Western studies. However, most of the studies were conducted in only one city or province and thus their results may not be generalisable. Acknowledging the infeasibility of recruiting a truly representative sample, we conducted a survey during 2009–10 using a probability sampling procedure to obtain a large and diverse sample of school-aged adolescents from six regions in China. About one in every 13 children had had experience of sexual abuse. Routine screening in medical and social settings is urged. Efforts should be made to ensure wide awareness of this issue.

We revisit our previous work on child abuse in Kuwait, with a focus on the sexual abuse data, and discuss the findings in the context of the local culture. In 2006, a nationwide sample of 4467 senior high-school students (mean age 16.9; 48.6% boys) at government secondary schools was studied. Over their lifetime, 8.6% had been sexually attacked, 5.9% had experienced someone threatening to have sex with them, 15.3% had experienced unwanted sexual exposure, and 17.4% had had someone touch their sexual parts (boys 21.1%, girls 14.0%; P < 0.001). Most perpetrators were members of the extended family. The way to assist ‘dysfunctional families’, where ‘family honour’ and the need for peaceful relations with neighbours have priority over the mental health of female victims, is to propagate the finding that child sexual abuse has a wide-ranging deleterious impact on psychosocial functioning.

This paper reports the results of a cross-sectional survey of 11- to 16-year-old school-going youths in ten southern African countries. The survey instrument recorded both the experience of coerced sex and the perpetration of forced sex. There were prominent school and community risk factors for increased risk-taking behaviours, revictimisation and the perpetration of sexual violence. This supports the idea that the local culture can reinforce the antisocial consequences of sexual abuse of boys and girls. There was a suggestion that the school environment can compound the effects of child sexual abuse in terms of conscious knowledge, high-risk behaviour, the risk of revictimisation and disdain for the safety of others.

This article provides a brief outline of mental health services in Qatar, historical notes on the use of informal traditional conventions under common law for the care under compulsory conditions of people who are mentally ill and information on the ongoing development of the Mental Health Law and its key provisions in the context of the new National Mental Health Strategy.

The history of the psychiatric scene in Jordan is briefly described, and the Jordanian Public Health Law is highlighted, as its chapter on mental health regulates compulsory admission. Some notes are included on the criminal law and civil law, and Jordan's forensic psychiatric services are briefly described.

The prevalence rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and subthreshold PTSD (SPTSD) were measured in 258 survivors of two suicide bombings in Karbala, Iraq, 2 months after the incidents. Of the total sample, 112 (43.4%) had PTSD and 59 (22.9%) had SPTSD. PTSD was more prevalent after the incident that was associated with more civilian deaths.

The evidence base for rapid tranquillisation is small in higher-income countries but is even smaller in sub-Saharan Africa. We initiated the first ever survey on the use of rapid tranquillisation in Zambia in 2009; a further survey was then done in 2010, after a programme of teaching and training. It demonstrated an overall improvement in clinical practice, safety, awareness and use of medications within therapeutic doses. It also led to a reduction in inappropriate use of medications. These improvements in practice occurred within a short time span and with minimal effort. Further international collaborative partnerships are required to build stronger mental health infrastructure in Zambia.

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.

This article looks at the evidence that not only did mental health problems affect people in the past, but that the physicians of past eras made numerous attempts to understand, classify and treat mental illness. Our aim is to show the strong scientific reasoning during the medieval era, in the Islamic world in particular, and how the complexities encountered by physicians centuries ago still haunt psychiatrists today.