The global movement towards a public health approach to substance use disorders.

Drug misuse is a global problem. Markets that supply illegal drugs often span international borders. However, each country has different primary drugs of use, populations that are using and consequences of use.

The Implementation of the WHO Mental Health Gap Intervention Guide (mhGAP-IG) in Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia and Kyrgyz Republic.

Despite the increasing burden of mental disorders, a lot of people worldwide suffer a gap in receiving necessary care in these countries. To close this gap, the WHO has developed mhGAP training modules aimed at scaling up mental health and substance use disorders services, especially in low- and middle-income countries. This article presents the experience of implementing the Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) in Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, and Kyrgyz Republic.

Reforming Undergraduate Psychiatry Training in Ukraine.

In Ukraine, mental health problems are common yet the mental health services available are still old fashioned and based on healthcare approaches used in the Soviet Union, providing mainly inpatient services and rudimentary community services. The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) to reduce the mental health treatment gap all over the world and 2 years later introduced the WHO mhGAP-Intervention Guide (mhGAP-IG), version 2.0 (2016) as not only an educational tool, but also an evidence based guideline to scale up services for mental, neurological and substance use (MNS) conditions with an objective to reduce gap between available health systems capacity and resources for mental health.

Serum insulin-like growth factor-1 as a potential marker for MDD diagnosis, its clinical characteristics, and treatment efficacy validation: data from an open-label vortioxetine study.

Background: IGF-1 is an essential neurotrophin produced peripherally and in the brain. Impairments in the brain IGF-1 concentrations might be responsible for some aspects of major depressive disorder (MDD) pathogenesis, whereas peripheral IGF-1 could have the marker value. We aimed: 1) to compare serum IGF-1 levels in MDD patients and healthy controls (HC); 2) to elucidate possible associations between changes in IGF-1 expression and crucial characteristics of the current depressive episode, MDD course; 3) to evaluate IGF-1 dynamics after 8 weeks` vortioxetine treatment.