Having decided to become a psychiatrist, I watched the autumn of 1978 fade into the notorious Winter of Discontent, the prelude to Margaret Thatcher’s first election victory. Leaving aside public sector strikes and severe cold weather, rather a lot of significant events in my life happened in the last three months of 1978. My long […]
Archive | Mental Health
Psychiatric Epiphany part 2: Formerly Surrey County Asylum
By Catherine Robinson on 17th January 2022 in 1970s, Hospitals, Medical School, Mental Health, Psychiatry
My wife has a habit of forgetting to tell me things. When she was at university, she neglected to tell me that her parents would be moving house before she came home for the holidays and I only found out by accident. She denies that this was an attempt to dump me and says she […]
Psychiatric Epiphany Part 1: Walking to Dartford Heath
By Catherine Robinson on 8th January 2022 in 1970s, History, Medical School, Mental Health, Psychiatry
When I was growing up, Bexley Hospital was the psychiatric facility for our part of London. “You belong in Bexley, you do!” was a regular childhood taunt. In 1968, when I was 12, my Auntie Peg was admitted to Bexley Hospital, where she was given a course of ECT and she was started on the […]
Small betrayals, Isaac Newton, John Milton and me
Most people might think that Isaac Newton and John Milton have very little in common with me, but they would be wrong. Despite some disparities with regard to stature within our chosen fields of endeavour, we belong to a select group. We (I like to think of the three of us as ‘we’) are all […]
The flame still flickers
I have had a good idea. Let’s acknowledge that the functionalised system of care in mental health was never a clearly articulated policy, that it was never based on proper evidence, that most patients and professionals dislike it and that it does not work. Let’s abandon it. All we have to do is to agree […]
*I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free
In recent months, I have found it difficult to prevent myself from continually blogging about the rise of the new brutalism. The next most pressing issue, as far as I am concerned, is the rapid and entirely unnecessary dismemberment of the NHS. I feel a bit trapped by the state of the world, which feels […]
A different drum beat
By Catherine Robinson on 30th January 2017 in India, Internationalism, Mental Health, Suicide Prevention
It is afternoon, and we are sitting in the peaceful setting of the courtyard of the Green Hotel, Mysuru, south India, drinking cappuccino and eating date and walnut cake. All of the ambiguities of the British relationship with India are here. The Green Hotel is run by a UK charity as a model of sustainable […]
Histrionics and quantum politics
Last week started with a somewhat anti-climactic announcement from the Prime Minister about mental health services. Her speech ended with a statement that “parity means parity”. If this was intended as a triumphant conclusion to a stirring performance, it fell rather flat. The phrase echoed her hollow “Brexit means Brexit” catechism. The Prime Minister seems […]
What’s going on?
One of the most memorable features of 2016 was a continuous cacophony of intolerance and raw aggression. Our most pressing task for 2017 is to find a distinctive voice of militant tolerance and decency. It is a bit of a challenge, but it must be done. Stridency appears to have infected public debate of all […]
The virtual asylum revisited
Early in my career as a consultant, I took responsibility for the psychiatric care of a group of men who had been resettled in a community facility after decades as residents in a distant mental hospital. One man sticks in my mind. Ernie had diagnoses of learning disability and chronic schizophrenia. He was mute. He […]