Research on speech and emotion is moving from a period of exploratory research into one where there is a prospect of substantial applications, notably in human-computer interaction. Progress in the area relies heavily on the development of appropriate databases. This paper addresses four main issues that need to be considered in developing databases of emotional speech: scope, naturalness, context and descriptors. The state of the art is reviewed. A good deal has been done to address the key issues, but there is still a long way to go. The paper shows how the challenge of developing appropriate databases is being addressed in three major recent projects–the Reading-Leeds project, the Belfast project and the CREST-ESP project. From these and other studies the paper draws together the tools and methods that have been developed, addresses the problems that arise and indicates the future directions for the development of emotional speech databases….