It is now fifty years since I started working at the Brook Hospital in Woolwich, and more than forty years since I picked up my Springfield Hospital pager on my first day as a psychiatric trainee. I have done a lot of different things as a psychiatrist. Amongst them, I am most proud of what […]
Archive | Psychiatry
“I’ve had such a curious dream” said Alice
On Monday, I was presented with an award by Alistair Campbell, who himself was given an award in the same ceremony. As it was all over my Twitter feed for a few hours (and has attracted some light trolling), I might as well acknowledge it. At present, there is a banner photo at the top […]
One step forward, two steps back
I was never entirely sure about my mother’s attitude to religion, as she often criticised my father for being too dogmatic in his atheism. When she was dying, I asked her if she wanted any religious element in her funeral. “Of course I don’t!” she snapped back, “what would I want that for?” Then she […]
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 […]
Dancing about psychiatry
No one knows who first said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, but dancing about psychiatry certainly does not seem to work. Stigma can be conveyed without the use of words. On Friday, I attended a really enjoyable party in honour of Vanessa Cameron, who leaves the Royal College of Psychiatrist at […]
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 […]
No more Knock Down Ginger
By Catherine Robinson on 6th November 2016 in India, Internationalism, Mental Health, Politics, Psychiatry
When I was a kid in South East London, there was no Internet and no video games. There were just two black and white television channels. Commencing the day after President Kennedy was assassinated, we had Dr Who on a Saturday evening, but both channels went off for an hour on Sunday evening. The Sixties […]
Sous les pavés, la plage!
Constant concern about the state of the NHS is wearing. In the background, there is a danger of unwittingly creating a sort of public nihilism, a belief that all is irredeemably lost. I am particularly concerned about deterring the young from entering medicine, and more especially psychiatry. The current crisis is real, but the medical […]
The sacred and the profane
I have no religion. As a young man, my opposition to religion was strident, but I have mellowed in this respect (actually, more or less everything I believed as a young man was stridently expressed). These days I do not really care what other people believe, so long as they do not impose it on […]
The Psychiatrist’s Bible
The thing about being a doctor is that it is more than just a job title. The day you qualify, there is an ontological shift. You feel different to how you did before and people treat you differently. You can never stop being a doctor: look at Dr David Owen, Dr Graham Garden and Dr […]