The Spanish Cooperation, through the nongovernmental organisation Sanitary Religious Federation and the financing of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation conducted an assessment of the mental health care system in Equatorial Guinea in 2009. There was no specific mental health policy in place, and noformalised mental health care system. A National Mental Health Policy has recently been approved, and an implementation plan was made by the government and nongovernmental organisations.

The authors describe a programme in a rural area of the West Bank (occupied Palestinian territory) developed in 2005 by Medicos del Mundo Spain, in coordination with the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health.

The massive influx of Iraqi refugees into Syria in 2006put an immense strain on the already underresourced mental health sector. This prompted a consortium of international agencies to create an Interagency Working Group (IAWG) in 2008, with the goal of national capacity building This Interagency Working group merged into a National Advisory Board that included the Syrian government. An integrated one-year master training programme for mental health professionals was designed.

The recent earthquake in Haiti exposed all the weaknesses in the mental health care system existing prior to the earthquake. This paper describes the strategy developed by the Dutch nongovernmental organisation Cordaid for providing integrated mental health and psychosocial support in Haiti after the earthquake. The strategy aimed to address mental health and psychosocial needs in the early recovery and reconsolidation phases, and to build mental health capacity of community level and primary health care providers.