The Sultanate of Oman is located in the south-east of the Arabian Peninsula. It has a distinctive history and subcultures. Its seafaring tradition has endowed the country with various ethnic and linguistic groups, with Arabic being a dominant language and Ibadhi being the dominant sect of Islam (Al-Nami, 1971). Oman in the 1970s saw rapid development, triggered by the discovery of oil, which took place under enlightened new political leadership.

Attitudes to mental illness

As in many traditional communities, modern psychiatric services have yet to play a dominant role in the care of people with psychiatric disorders. Mental illness was largely the preserve of traditional healers, and many people with psychiatric illness are still unlikely to seek psychiatric help until they have reached an advanced stage of irreversible pathology or until ‘treatment shopping’ from complementary and alternative medicine has failed to provide any benefit (Al-Adawi et al, 2002a).

More positively, however, because an altered mental state is attributed to jinn (and religious teaching affirms the existence of such agents), there is little evidence of pervasive stigma towards people with mental illness in traditional Omani society (Al-Adawi et al, 2002a).

Common psychiatric illness

Although no formal epidemiological study of psychiatric illness has yet been conducted, anecdotal and impressionistic reports suggest that many types of mental disorders encountered in other countries are common in Oman, although with culturally determined differences in the types of reaction and the incidence (Al-Adawi et al, 1997, 2001, 2002b; Chand et al, 2000).

The Omani population is undergoing a ‘demographic transition’, with declining death rates complemented by high birth rates. This is likely to be accompanied by an increase in the number of people with psychiatric disorders. There is also an indication that the country is bracing itself for the social and economic consequences of a more youthful population, with far more job-seekers than the labour market can absorb. The traditional passage to adulthood is also changing, as youngsters are expected to marry late and to have children when they are well into their 20s. However, the ‘adolescent turmoil’ seen in Western societies is not evident in Omani society, which emphasises family obedience.