The increasing evidence base for cost-effective interventions and a fledgling advocacy effort have given momentum to mental health becoming a global priority. The contention of this editorial is that we are at a tipping point if we can exploit the opportunities that will be afforded to mental health professionals and advocates in the next year or two. The missing links are the development of consensus among mental health stakeholders, the formation of coalitions and partnerships with both advocates and policy-makers, and the mobilisation of a stronger advocacy effort built around consumer and family member ‘voice’ and empowerment.

We asked the programme managers for mental health at the World Health Organization's Regional Offices for Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean and South-East Asia to provide an account of developments in the provision of mental health services within their regions.

We are very fortunate that these busy and influential individuals were able to set aside the time to prepare articles that shed a fascinating light on strategic thinking within the World Health Organization.

Over the past decade, attention has increasingly focused on the need to increase the capacity of mental health services. The World Health Report 2001 – Mental Health: New Understanding, New Hope (World Health Organization, 2001) set the agenda, advocating the development of community-based mental health services. The case for scaling up, inspired by the World Health Organization's vision of ‘no health without mental health’, was powerfully argued first in the Lancet series in 2007 (Prince et al, 2007) and again in the Lancet in 2011 (Eaton et al, 2011). The forthcoming Global Mental Health Action Plan, requested in a resolution by member states of the World Health Organization at the 2012 World Health Assembly, is a great opportunity to formulate objectives and targets for countries, and to analyse experiences from around the world. The forthcoming European Action Plan builds on this, customising actions for European countries.

The Eastern Mediterranean Region of the World Health Organization has recently developed a comprehensive strategy and action plan to promote mental health and provide for the integrated prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of mental, neurological and substance use disorders. By strengthening national mental health policies, plans and legislation, scaling up integrated services, capacity-building, promoting human rights and prioritising vulnerable groups, the strategy aims to improve mental health and to help countries achieve their national development objectives.

Traditionally, care for mental and neurological disorders has been concentrated in tertiary care hospitals located in large cities. These custodial types of facility were designed to ‘protect’ the community from patients with a mental illness, as such persons were considered dangerous and a threat to the community. Given the state of medical knowledge in the 19th and 20th centuries, this mode of care was considered appropriate. However, in recent decades more humane and effective concepts of care have evolved. These concepts recognise the stigma attached to hospital-based care and also its limited outreach to the community, leaving out the vast majority of people living in rural and remote areas. Violation of human rights, sometimes seen in mental hospitals, has also been of concern.

In Denmark, the parliament passed the first Mental Health Act (MHA) in 1938. A new Act was passed in 1989, based on a thorough report from the Ministry of Justice. The 1989 Act emphasised the protection of citizens' legal rights in relation to compulsory admission, detention and treatment in psychiatric hospitals. That Act is still in operation, although it has been amended several times. In 2006 the definition of ‘compulsion’ was changed, and a 2010 amendment introduced compulsory treatment in the community for a trial period of 4 years.

A tradition of Romano-Germanic or civil law defines the legal system in Finland. Laws of relevance to psychiatry are the 1990 Mental Health Act and, insofar as it pertains to forensic psychiatry, the Criminal Law (1889) and the Law on State Mental Hospitals (1987, revised 1997). These are outlined in the present paper.

To monitor global representation in the psychiatric literature, we compared publication rates in the ten psychiatric journals with the highest impact factors in 1998 and 2008 by world regions. In both 1998 and 2008, North America, Northern Europe, Western Europe and Oceania produced the majority of psychiatric research papers published in these journals, despite representing only a small fraction of the world's population. This suggests that much of the world's population continues to be underrepresented in highly influential psychiatric journals.

We aimed to find the depression rating scale with the greatest accuracy when applied by psychiatrists in Iraqi Kurdistan. We recruited 200 patients with primary depression and 200 controls living in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The Mini International Neuropsychiatry Inventory (MINI) was used as a gold standard for DSM-IV depression. We also used: the two-item and the nine-item versions of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ2, PHQ9), the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), the Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia (CDSS) and the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression (CES-D) scale. Interviews were performed by psychiatrists who also rated their clinical judgement using the Clinical Global Impression (CGI) scale and other mental health practitioners. All scales and tools performed with high accuracy and reliability. The least accurate tool was the PHQ2; however, with only two items it was efficient. Sensitivity and specificity for all tools were above 90%. Clinicians using the CGI were accurate in their clinical judgement. The CDSS appeared to be the most accurate scale for DSM-IV major depression and the PHQ2 the most efficient. However, only the CDSS appeared to offer an advantage over psychiatrists' judgement.

Reception order (RO) by a magistrate is a mode of involuntary admission provided under the Indian Mental Health Act of 1987. To the best of our knowledge there has been no evaluation of this provision in clinical practice. The present paper is a descriptive study through retrospective case-note review of patients admitted by way of RO to a tertiary care hospital in Goa. Compared with those admitted voluntarily, those admitted by RO tended to be single, middle aged (40–60 years old) and non-Goan; on average they had a significantly longer hospital stay than voluntarily admitted patients. Non-affective psychosis and substance use disorders were the more common diagnoses. While admissions by RO serve a useful role in bringing patients who are not under proper care into the mental healthcare system, they do not address the issue of aftercare.