Bangladesh is a small, populous South Asian nation with poor literacy, limited resources and a lack of basic healthcare. Caring for people with psychiatric disorders in such a setting is challenging. The prevalence of psychiatric disorder in Bangladesh is similar to that in other countries, yet there is a severe shortage of well trained psychiatrists and a lack of even basic mental health services. To generate large numbers of well trained psychiatrists, Bangladesh must expand its high-quality psychiatric training and education at both the postgraduate and the undergraduate levels. To achieve these ambitious goals, Bangladesh needs help and assistance from regional and international institutions. The Royal College of Psychiatrists can play a role of critical psychiatric public health importance by helping Bangladesh locally train a new generation of psychiatrists who will care for the vast number of those with ailments of mind and soul.

Education in modern medicine in India began in 1835 with the establishment of the Madras Medical College, in what is now Chennai. Initially the growth of new medical schools was slow but it gathered pace after independence in 1947. In the past decade or so, the growth in terms of the creation of new medical schools has been phenomenal.

In psychiatric medicine, as in other fields, Europe offers a diversity of history and academic tradition that belies its limited geographical area. There are numerous centres of excellence — in psychiatric research, service innovation and practice — and many countries have internationally recognised and excellent training schemes in psychiatry. But uniformity of practice is seldom in evidence.

During the Edo period in Japan (1603–1867), people with mental illness were not excluded from society. Upon the introduction of European psychiatry around the 1870s, Japanese society became more discriminatory, however. In 1900 a primary law was introduced to regulate the custody of patients. In 1919 another law was approved to facilitate the establishment of public psychiatric hospitals. In 1950 the Mental Hygiene Law was enacted to prohibit home custody. However, these regulations did not assure quality of care or protect service users' rights. Also, after the Second World War, many private psychiatric hospitals were built, but this expansion of the sector was not well thought out or well coordinated. In Japan, the government regulates the private health sector only insofar as it sets standardised fees for treatments and carries out basic quality assurance.

Cambodia is a low-income country in south-east Asia. It covers an area of 181 035 km2 and has a population of 14.5 million, of whom 42% are less than 15 years old. Life expectancy is 56.8 years and 36% of the population live on less than US$0.50 per day. Cambodia experienced a brutal civil war and genocide in the 1970s under the Khmer Rouge regime, during which approximately 1.7 million Cambodians were killed (Chandler, 1999) and the social and medical infrastructure was almost completely destroyed. No mental health services existed throughout the conflict and subsequent Vietnamese occupation, despite the incalculable impact of the Khmer Rouge regime on Cambodians' mental health. The current political situation is more stable, although there remain concerns about human rights abuses (Khan, 2005).

The Netherlands borders the North Sea and is located between Belgium and Germany. Its total area is about 41 500 km2, nearly 34 000 km2 of which is land area. The country consists mostly of coastal lowland and land reclaimed from the sea (polders). An extensive system of dykes and dams protects nearly one-half of the total area from being flooded.

In Thailand, we have only two programmes for residency training in psychiatry: one is general or adult psychiatry, which takes 3 years to complete; the other is child and adolescent psychiatry, which takes 4 years. There are nine institutes that offer residency training but only three medical schools have the capacity to offer training in both general and child psychiatry (Table 1).

Suicide rates and rates of self-harm are high in Mauritius. This report concerns a comprehensive analysis of the incidence of self-poisoning on the island. The incidence of self-poisoning could be minimised if all the causative factors contributing to the practice were identified. Since this form of self-harm is influenced by demographic patterns, the social and economic environment, legal provisions and the healthcare system, a study specific to Mauritius will be of great relevance.