Today I was at my Citroen garage to have a malfunctioning driver’s side door handle replaced. I had problems getting in and out of the car. The problematic door handle should have been replaced 2 weeks ago when I and the car were present at the garage for other repairs. But on that occasion, I was told that the chap who did the painting had not done it as he was supposed to, had arrived at the premises, and would ...
I feel a sense of despair as I observe many younger doctors rushing headlong into UK psychiatry, and I wonder, “Do they know what they’re in for?” But then I have to remind myself that for a sizeable proportion, this is driven by forced choices based on economic survival. Recruitment About 10 years ago I was persona non-grata in a debate about the RCPsych’s revamped at the time, recruitment drive. I lost – as is usually the case because the ...
Have you ever read a text message and felt your blood boil, only to realise you completely misunderstood the sender? Those baffling moments come from the incredible power words carry — a power that shifts depending on how those words are spoken, the surrounding situation, and who says them. It is like we’re constantly dancing with interpretation, where tone, expression, and your own mood shape the whole experience. Yet, in today’s text-heavy world, much of this vital context gets lost, ...
The recent events on the sentencing of Valdo Calocane have led to public outcries. Mr Coates’ son James (a victim) said that Calocane had “made a mockery of the system“, adding that “he has got away with murder“. I have no relationship to the victims, their families, Calocane or the legal proceedings. This exploration will go into the events, construct a timeline (that may be updated) and look into the medicolegal issues. The details on the partial defence of diminished ...
This article is an exploration of two legal defences to unlawful homicide. The materials here are for educational purposes and subject to our disclaimer. The word ‘insanity’ is obviously related to ‘insane’. In the UK people are not ‘certified as insane’, contrary to popular social media belief – driven by movies. If you wish to learn more this will be a substantial read and study. I will go into legal history, the law and how it connects to cases in ...
For this post and all others (past and present), by psychiatry I also mean mental health services. Whilst psychiatry is a medical discipline it sits within and is normally closely linked to other aspects of mental health services. Introduction In this post I explore how mental health services can learn from disaster management, mistakes, and failures across other industries. I will be thinking about what can be learned from the perspective of NHS psychiatric services. I often study many videos ...
As a result of recent media publicity about surgeon’s performance, I began thinking that I rarely if ever see any stories in the media about psychological harm caused by failures in psychiatric treatments. I reflected on this and thought, that with surgery it is easier to spot errors in retrospect because patients can be subject to x-rays, scans and other tests to show physical things that went wrong procedurally. But in psychiatry where we use medications (or occasionally ECT), there ...
In the last 3 years I’ve received many requests for medication reviews. Interestingly most of those requests came from nurses; not pharmacists, not social workers and not other doctors. Underlying the requests were generally some concern that patients were not improving. Not a single request was about medication toxicity, or polypharmacy. Nurses tended to hint at the patient requiring higher doses or demand prescribing more medications. That body of experience led me to investigate the concept of medication reviews. All ...
It is important in the medical practice of psychiatry to understand forces opposed to psychiatry. From my experience, I have witnessed antipsychiatry views even among trained mental health professionals. I declare a professional bias that I have not found those views helpful to patients’ progress. Introduction Antipsychiatry is a movement and perspective that fundamentally challenges the assumptions, concepts, and practices of mainstream psychiatry. It arose in the 1960s and has evolved over the years, with variations in its scope and ...
What is psychiatry? Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental, emotional, and behavioural disorders. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who specialises in mental health, including substance use disorders. Psychiatrists are qualified to assess and treat both the mental and physical aspects of psychological problems. Psychiatrists do not always use medications to treat mentally disordered people. People seek psychiatric help for many reasons. The problems can be sudden, such as a panic ...
