Psychiatry in Latin America

For the purposes of the present report we will include under the generic term of Latin America a group of 20 countries with geographic, historical, political and cultural common links, which because of being former colonies of Spain and Portugal might better be called Iberoamerica. Tied together in regional groups during colonial days, they became independent at the beginning of last century and initiated their republican life as separate countries. In almost all of them Spanish is spoken as the exclusive or major language, the two exceptions being Brazil and Haiti.