This book is very important for two reasons: it is the first-ever textbook of psychopharmacology focusing on the Asia-Pacific region, and it is, as far as I know, the first internationally authored volume dealing specifically with ethno-psychopharmacology.

Both developments are remarkable. In the past few years, the international literature has been enriched by textbooks of psychiatry focusing on Latin America, Asia and Africa, which have proved to be very useful to clinicians in the respective regions, while at the same time providing the international readership with a lot of previously unavailable information. If these textbooks have been useful, even more timely may be this first “regional” textbook of psychopharmacology, which is likely to improve psychiatric practice in the Asia-Pacific region and represent a model for other regions of the world.

On the other hand, a book on ethno-psychopharmacology, which could perhaps have been regarded as a scientific curiosity a decade ago, will certainly not be perceived as such today by the vast majority of psychiatrists worldwide. Most of us live now in multiethnic environments, in which cultural variations in the expression of psychopathology can be directly observed by the average practitioner, and in which problems in communication and diagnostic approach to persons with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds are being experienced on a daily basis. Increasingly widespread also is the awareness of the ethnic and cultural variations in the response to the most common psychotropic medications, which is certainly a matter of genetic polymorphisms, but also a consequence of the impact of a variety of environmental factors.