Sudan is located to the south of Egypt, along the Red Sea. The country has a total area of 1 886 068 km 2 (728 215 square miles) and a population of just over 37 million and is classified by the World Bank as a low-income country. The adult literacy rate is 59%. The total annual expenditure on healthcare is 4.3% of the gross domestic product, but the proportion spent on mental healthcare is unknown. As of 2009, there were just 0.09 psychiatrists and 0.2 psychiatric nurses per 100 000 population, and 0.2 mental health beds per 10 000 people, of which 90% were hospital-based; the other 10% were community-based units run by physician assistants and psychologists. 1,2

We invited 108 psychiatrists of Sudanese origin, working in and outside Sudan, to take part in a study looking at the most appropriate method for scaling up mental health services in Sudan. Of those psychiatrists who were approached, 81 (75%) responded. Among the respondents, 30 (37%) resided and worked in Sudan, and 51 (63%) worked outside Sudan (mostly in the UK and Arab Gulf States). Most respondents preferred the lay counsellor model (43, 53.2%) to address the current shortage of human resources for scaling up mental health services.