The World Health Organization, Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, has supported the development of the Atlas project. The projects provides systematic information on country resources for mental health programme development including policy availability, professional resources and mechanisms for fi nancing services. The child and adolescent mental health Atlas is a part of this series of publications. Obtaining relevant and accurate information for this Atlas was a challenge refl ecting the relatively sparse resources that are available especially in the developing world. We are hopeful that the child and adolescent mental health Atlas will stimulate debate on the development.
