Aging in Nepal.

Like many countries, the increase in the population of older adults in Nepal has led to national policies and programs to address their needs. It would, however, also be fair to say that not enough is yet known about older adults and hence it is unclear if government programs truly address those needs. Nepal is a very poor country that is still largely rural and characterized by extremes of inequality based on caste/ethnicity, gender, region, and income/wealth.

The bioethics of medical research in very poor countries.

Sociologists have had only a marginal effect on the development of bioethical principles for medical research despite their interest in the effects of social and economic inequality on health and its implications for issues of social and individual justice. In this article we review existing bioethical standards for conducting medical research in very poor countries. Given the substantial differences in individual exposure to health risks and the availability of health protective resources as well as differences in the disease burden and mortality and morbidity at the population level, it is clear that illness in poor countries can be better understood using a social causation of illness perspective.

Taking sociology seriously: a new approach to the bioethical problems of infectious disease.

After a history of neglect, bioethicists have recently turned their attention to the topic of infectious disease. In this paper we link bioethicists' earlier neglect of infectious disease to their under-appreciation of the extent to which the problem of infectious disease is related to social factors and thus to questions of justice. We argue that a social causation of illness model - well-known to sociologists of medicine, but incompletely understood by bioethicists - will improve future bioethical analysis of issues related to infectious disease.

Mental illness and disability among elders in developing countries: the case of Nepal.

Objective: This article attempts to document the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among elders in a rural village in Nepal. In addition, we investigate the relationship between psychiatric illness and functional disability to assess the impact of disorder on social functioning.

Method: A semistructured interview checklist to diagnose six disorders was used (N = 182).

Measuring community mental health in developing societies: evaluation of a checklist format in Nepal.

Background: There is growing recognition of the importance of mental health problems in developing countries. In large part, however, we have very limited epidemiological data at national and/or community levels about the prevalence of mental illnesses.

Aims: The purpose of this paper is to describe the reliability and validity characteristics of an assessment tool that may be useful for conducting community-level surveys (particularly in rural communities of developing countries) to obtain prevalence rates of mental illnesses.