The summer news drought has been cancelled. Right back in the middle of the 19th Century, Fleet Street labelled the month of August ‘the Silly Season’ (‘Cucumber Time’ to my European readers). This year we have a vibrant Technicolor news freak out instead. Every time you think that Mr Trump has reached his offensive peak, […]
Author Archive | Catherine Robinson
The Ministry of Fear
As I arrived in Southwold, Suffolk, for the annual family gathering, I was puzzled by a plethora of red, white and blue bunting. It was the day after the Bastille Day massacre in Nice and I briefly wondered if the bunting was a gesture of solidarity. Then I wondered if the town was having an […]
Chaos and lies
There seems to be a lot of news at present. It is not just the quantity that is exhausting. Like the weather, severe news events are becoming unnaturally common. Once-a-century phenomena are occurring several times a week. Personally, I would like some respite. Events are piling in on top of each other so that, for […]
Apart from that, everything is fine
The news media are overflowing with speculation about the cataclysmic implications of Brexit, which is fair enough. It is a huge event. Meantime, out in the world at large, we need to anticipate the likely consequences for our own work, which in my case means mental health services. I was at a party in London […]
More on psychiatrists and the prevention of terrorism
I am not, generally speaking, greatly drawn to Tory MPs. When Kenneth Clarke was on Desert Island Discs twenty odd years ago, I was dismayed to find that we had overlapping musical tastes. It did not shift my opinion about his politics. Yesterday morning, I heard Dr Sarah Wollaston on the BBC’s Today programme, explaining […]
Radicalisation and mental health
Dr Philip McGarry is a psychiatrist from Belfast. He is an old friend, a little younger than me. He is former Chair of the non-sectarian Alliance Party of Northern Ireland. He knows a lot more than most people about political violence and its relationship with mental disorder. Philip sent me an email on Sunday, concerned […]
Lost struggles
Last week, Sally Brampton walked into the sea and died. Her editorial and authorial skills were widely admired, and her death caused a lot of sadness. For a few days, mental illness amongst the famous was back in the news. I thought that the media coverage of her death was pretty appropriate in tone, but […]
¡No pasarán!
People who have a religious faith say that it affects everything they do, though it mostly goes unstated. I suppose that political convictions are similar. It is wrong for doctors to use their clinical relationship with patients as a platform for political proselytisation, but health and health care are deeply political matters. In a job […]
What’s the frequency, Kenneth?
By Catherine Robinson on 29th April 2016 in Junior doctors’ strike, Ken Livingstone, Mental Health, Stigma
Ken Livingstone has long enlivened our national life, with his engaging television manner and his love of newts. He has run rings around successive leaders of the Labour Party. It is arguable that for a time he was the most effective adversary of Margaret Thatcher’s regime. He has shrugged off concerted efforts to smear him, […]
Insurgency in theatre greens
The junior doctors’ dispute has induced a mood of apocalyptic gloom everywhere that the medical profession gathers. Moaning has always been part of medical culture, but none of us have ever seen anything remotely like this before. The entire profession is very apprehensive about the forthcoming strike, despite extraordinary levels of support for Dr Malawana […]