This book originated from an international meeting held in Geneva to mark the retirement of Norman Sartorius. It offers an overview of the many achievements of the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Division of Mental Health over the previous 25 years, during which Norman Sartorius had been at the forefront of its activities. And what creative years they were: the International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia (IPSS), followed by the Determinants of Outcome of Severe Mental Disorders (DOSMED); the standardised assessment of depressive disorders; cross-cultural studies on drug and substance misuse; the coordination of multi-national research in biological psychiatry; the development of Chapter V of ICD-10 in its three distinct formats; numerous new psychiatric assessment instruments; and the promotion of community-based mental health programmes in developing countries. These activities are all surveyed in this volume by contributors who have been closely associated with the WHO in a variety of roles.

If I had to single out one particular achievement of this period, it would be the cross-cultural studies in the epidemiology of schizophrenia. Following on from the success of the IPSS, which established that the core schizophrenic syndrome was almost the same in all the populations and cultures investigated, the DOSMED study found that the incidence of this core syndrome was remarkably constant across cultures but that its course and outcome were highly variable (much better in developing countries). These findings continue to fascinate and challenge us, and surely demand deeper cross-cultural exploration. History may judge the WHO-coordinated work on the epidemiology of schizophrenia as one of the most important achievements of the 20th century in the entire field of psychiatry.

What of the man at the centre of all this activity? In a felicitous simile, the editors liken Norman Sartorius to a world-class orchestral conductor, who wields his baton and inspires his players. Warm tributes are paid to him by many contributors. The personal qualities that made his years of leadership so fruitful include his intellectual and scientific acuity, his astonishing energy and ability to handle many complex multi-centre collaborative projects simultaneously, the appointment of first-rate senior lieutenants and a gift for friendship that included almost every leading mental health figure in the major developing countries.

Some repetition is perhaps inevitable in a multi-authored book of this kind. It is necessarily a bird's eye view, with summaries of research findings. But the inclusion of copious references to work published under the auspices of the WHO makes this a very useful work of reference, especially for psychiatrists in training. Every post-graduate psychiatric library should have a copy on its shelves.