A synopsis of recent influential papers published in psychiatric journals from the Arab World

Abstract After a brief introduction to the Arab region, six recent and influential papers that have appeared in one of the three leading psychiatry journals from the region are summarized. The first paper discusses the lifetime prevalence of mental disorders in Lebanon and assesses the influence of war. From a representative sample of 2857 individuals they showed that only a minority of individuals with a diagnosable mental disorder have received professional treatment. War exposure increased the risk of first onset of anxiety, mood, and impulse control disorders. The second paper examines the impact of ethnicity on psychiatric disorders in a sample of foreign workers living in Saudi Arabia. They concluded that ethnicity and level of employment influence both the diagnosis and the disposition from the ER (emergency room) with South East Asians more likely to be hospitalized. The next paper discusses the Inter-Rater Reliability of the Short Arabic Form of The Present State Examination (PSE-10) and provides evidence of good reliability and adequate levels of internal consistency. The next study provided evidence for the effectiveness of treatment by home visits from the community psychiatry services in reducing the number of admissions and the duration of hospital stays in chronic schizophrenia patients in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The fifth selected paper discusses the ethical and psychiatric implications of adolescent cosmetic surgery and provides data collected from 3300 Arab females from ten countries. The article concludes by a discussion by the leading Arab psychiatrist Ahmed Okasha on new perspectives on the “social brain”.