Child psychiatry across cultures

The mental health of children its developing countries is important but underexplored Methodological problems of prevalence studies in this field include the toe of case definitions and disability criteria developed ill the West and rite assumption that dimensions of disorder and thresholds for reporting problems are similar to European and North American populations. School, clinic and population-based prevalence studies conducted in developing countries report a diversity of prevalence rates but the absence of methodological uniformity prevents useful comparisons. in addition to social, demographic and academic associations of child psychiatric disorder in developing countries, the relevance of malnutrition, tropical infections and adverse perinatal factors is reviewed. The implications of research findings for service provision are discussed.