In 2001, Richard Smith, then editor of the BMJ, asked why doctors were so unhappy. He provoked a huge international response. The suggested reasons included: changes in the social structures of work; the demographic shift and difficulties in the recruitment and retention of staff; the replacement of trust with accountability; changes in relationships with people and bodies that are responsible for policy and practice; and negative media reporting.

Italy is a country that has a very long tradition, dating back to the Middle Ages, of offering assistance to people with all kinds of disabilities. The approach taken to intellectual disability in recent times can be divided into two periods: before and after the enactment of Law 180 in 1978. That law set in train a profound reform of Italy's public sector psychiatric care, which principally involved the closure of the psychiatric hospitals and the establishment of a system of community care.

It is said that war is far too serious a matter to be left to the generals alone. The same could be said for the interface between law and mental health. With our narrow, and sometimes myopic, treatment-centric vision we are ill equipped to claim hegemony over the complex domain of legislation as it relates to mental health, even more so in the multicultural Indian subcontinent, where the medieval exists alongside the modern and where abject poverty jostles with ostentatious wealth:

This article examines factors that are salient to understanding forced marriages and provides an overview of the issue. It aims to promote awareness in the UK, where there is a need for services to develop appropriate responses, as primary care and the local psychiatric services are not geared up to tackle such transcultural issues.