A worldwide survey on training provisions for psychiatric trainees in WPA member associations.

This World Psychiatric Association (WPA) global survey of its WPA member society presidents using an online self-administered 15-item questionnaire successfully recruited 47 WPA member countries or regions (response rate = 39.8%) to provide responses about training provisions of psychiatric education at undergraduate, postgraduate, and post-qualified levels in their respective countries. There were significantly fewer responses from the low and middle income countries (LMIC) than the high income countries (HIC).

The reality of the management of mental health services in Latin America, reflexions from the perspective of a vision of strategic planning.

The history of mental health services in Latin America, has been influenced by public policies derived from governments in turn, in each one of the countries of the region. As much in the definition of these public policies, as in the resource allocation, the rule has been inconsistency and indifference. The few results have been dependent on the decision of one or just a few people who were able to make decisions in local and regional Latin American governments.

Child psychiatry and mental health in Latin America.

The review of epidemiological studies of psychiatric disorders in children and teenagers in Latin America, is validated and updated in this article. The present article incorporates variants that are contributed from the neurosciences, which allow us to see difficulties as opportunities, across such mechanisms as the plasticity neuronal, trying to change paradigms, frequently pessimistic in this type of review, and we call for the active participation of all the scientific societies of our countries in the development of public policies, based on prevention, for the vulnerability of the rights of our children and teenagers suggesting a multidisciplinary boarding in mental health.

Psychiatry in Venezuela.

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela covers 916 445 km; to the north is the Caribbean Sea, to the south-east the Amazonian region and the plains of Brazil and Colombia, and to the west the Andes and the Colombian Guajira peninsula. Its estimated population (2004) is 25 226 million, which is concentrated along the north coastal area, where the population density exceeds 200 inhabitants per km; most of the territory remains almost inhabited (fewer than 6 inhabitants per km), in particular the border areas. The population is mainly urban: 70% live in cities with more than 50 000 inhabitants.