We aimed to compare disability rates associated with physical disorders versus psychiatric disorders and to establish treatment rates of both classes of disorder in the South African population. In a nationally representative survey of 4351 adults, treatment and prevalence rates of a range of physical and psychiatric disorders, and their associated morbidity during the previous 12 months were investigated. Physical illnesses were reported in 55.2% of the sample, 60.4% of whom received treatment for their disorder. Approximately 10% of the samples show a mental illness with 6.1% having received treatment for their disorder. The prevalence of any mental illness reported was higher than that reported individually for asthma, cancer, diabetes, and peptic ulcer. Mental disorders were consistently reported to be more disabling than physical disorders and the degree of disability increased as the number of comorbid disorders increased. Depression, in particular, was rated consistently higher across all domains than all physical disorders. Despite high rates of mental disorders and associated disability in South Africa, they are less likely to be treated than physical disorders.

The relationship between cognitive impairment and white-matter integrity in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) remains poorly understood, particularly in clade C. The authors utilized diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation to investigate the relationship between cognitive impairment and white-matter integrity in HIV-positive subjects with clade C HIV. Forty-four HIV-infected individuals and 10 seronegative subjects were compared, using a whole-brain, voxel-based approach to define fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusion (MD). Compared with healthy-control subjects, the HIV-infected group exhibited decreased FA in the corpus callosum, superior longitudinal fasciculus, and cingulum and sagittal stratum. This study provides evidence that white-matter integrity is compromised in individuals infected with clade C HIV.

Our finding that psychotic symptoms (ie hallucinations) are significantly associated with functional impairment and service utilization supports the potential clinical significance of such symptoms, even in the African context.

Husbands' externalising disorders had a modest but consistent association with marital violence across diverse countries. This finding has implications for the development of targeted interventions to reduce risk of marital violence.

A key challenge for person-centred psychiatry is to combine the generalised findings of objective science with responsiveness to the diverse values of each individual patient.  There are two main ethical resources for responding to this challenge, substantive and analytic

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Consistent with data from the developed world, mental disorders are strong predictors of suicidal behaviour, and these associations are more often explained by the prediction of ideation, rather than the prediction of attempts amongst ideators. This suggests some universality of the relevant mechanisms underlying the genesis of suicidal thoughts, and the progression to suicide attempts.