M. Venkataswamy Reddy's & C.R. Chandrashekar's Reply

Psychiatric disorders in a rural community in West Bengal-an epidemiological study. Prevalence of psychiatric morbidity in two tribal communities in certain villages of West Bengal-a cross cultural study. (1980a) Socioeconomic status and mental morbidity in certain tribes and castes in India-a cross cultural study. (1980b) Mental morbidity and urban life-an epidemiological study. Urbanization and mental morbidity in certain tribal communities in West Bengal. (1993) Prevalence of psychiatric morbidity in an urban community of Pondicherry. Psychiatric morbidity in an urban slum-dwelling com-(1967) Three hundred urban families-a psychiatric study. (1995) Prevalence of priority psychiatric disorders in a rural area of Kerala. Sir, We are grateful to Dr. M. Meghachandra Singh and Dr. S.C. Pradhan for their interest and comments on the article 'prevalence of mental and behavioural disorders in India : a metaanalysis'. In five studies where the target populations and sampling techniques for selection of study areas were not specified, their combined sample had sex ratio of 978, children below 15 years of age constituted 45.8% and aged 60 years and above constituted 4.6%. The respective figures for the combined sample of four studies where the populations were based on convenience, were 909, 36.8% and 6.9%. As per 1981 census, the respective figures were 933, 39.6% and 6.5%. These age and sex distributions of the combined samples in the two groups of studies can be considered as fair representation of Indian population. Two studies on tribals and one study on slum people represented their respective segments of Indian population. Checking for variation in prevalence rates reported in West Bengal, the response error where the head/housewife were interviewed, and utility of own diagnostic tools formed an important step in the validation of the obtained results. Separate prevalence rates were worked out based on the studies specified by each of the criteria mentioned, as shown in annexure 84