Owing to the large and increasing number of vacant consultant posts in psychiatry, and the suspicion that premature retirement was an important cause of this problem, a questionnaire was sent to all consultants who were believed to have retired from their National Health Service (NHS) posts before their 65th birthday during 1995 or 1996. One hundred and forty-two (82%) of 173 questionnaires were returned. Responses to these Indicated that disenchantment with some aspect of the previous Conservative Government's ‘NHS Reforms' was a more important reason for retirement than ill health, a wish to devote more time to other interests, or even bed closures. Increasing bureaucracy and paperwork was a key factor for many.

Ninety-five countries throughout the world retain the death penalty. All make provision for excluding the ‘insane’ from liability to capital punishment (Hood, 1990). Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals are therefore involved in the process leading up to capital sentencing and execution in many of these countries. Such involvement may take many forms though, with the notable exception of the USA, very little is known of its nature or extent in practice. Whatever form psychiatric involvement takes, and however much it may be shaped in different places by social, economic and cultural variables, as well as the configuration of particular criminal justice systems, certain fundamental ethical questions arise which do not admit of simple answers. It might be argued that these ethical dilemmas no longer have relevance to European countries because they have all effectively abolished capital punishment. However, others may claim that the death penalty, as the most spectacular example of the extra clinical harm to which a psychiatrist's dealings with patients may contribute, ought to be of central concern when practitioners come to consider the uncertain balance between their duty to an individual patient and society at large.

We reviewed, prospectively, all patients who presented themselves at the reception of a large psychiatric hospital, which had no casualty department, to assess the extent and value of a long standing ‘unofficial emergency service’ that has been provided for decades. We found no evidence that the service was abused or that it led to unwarranted admissions. The service could provide a useful point of entry to mental health services for certain patients. The ‘ad hoc’ emergency service described here is hoping to become a recognised ‘Emergency Clinic’ in the reprovided service, after the closure of this 100 year old psychiatric institution in the very near future.

Group psychotherapy for adults reporting childhood sexual abuse is a well recognised form of treatment but little attention has been given to the possible adverse effects. This paper reports on three patients seen within a NHS trust department of psychotherapy who had taken part in an incest ‘survivor group’. They described individual satisfaction with their improvement but appeared, when viewed externally, to have deteriorated.

A client held record for patients with long-term mental illness was introduced by a community mental health team in east London. The record was evaluated by asking the opinions of 45 patients and examining how their client record had been used. Over 80% of the patients found the record and the information it contained useful, 74% of contacts were recorded in the booklet and the client held record had begun to be used by many professionals for purposes other than appointments and medication. A client held record can increase patient involvement in care and help communication between professionals.

This prospective study assessed the importance off baseline clinical, socio-demographic and diagnostic variables on patient outcome at six weeks, and their relationship to total length of stay. It included all patients admitted to an acute day hospital in inner London over a one-year period, and used standardised rating scales. All scales improved after six weeks, but only improvement on the Global Assessment Scale (GAS) predicted the length off stay in those patients who were depressed. There was an increased length off stay in patients with a diagnosis off personality disorder and those admitted with a lower score on the GAS.

The clinical observation that some psychotic patients were attempting to register their ideas as patents prompted a survey of published patents. The hypothesis was that, given supposed links between creativity and mental illness, the Patent Office might be a repository of psychotic ideas. Searches were made on specific topics suggested by our patients' applications. A survey was undertaken of unusual patents in the collection as a whole, and of authors with unusual track records. Bizarre and eccentric patents were identified, but patents of the sort that our patients attempted to register were absent. Possible explanations for this result are discussed.

This paper highlights the role that the World Wide Web (WWW) has to play as an aid to psychiatry. A basic history of the WWW is provided as is an introduction to some search techniques involved with the WWW. The literature on applications potentially relevant to psychiatry is reviewed using computer search facilities (BIDS, PsychLit and Medline). The WWW is one of the aspects of the Internet that possesses a huge potential for exploitation, both the clinical and research psychiatrist are able to benefit from its use.

After the fall of South Vietnam to North Vietnamese forces in 1975, Vietnam has remained virtually isolated from the rest of the world. With the global political changes of the past 10 years. the Hanoi Government succeeded in reducing Vietnam's international isolation in part by attempting to open the country's door to foreign visitors. The country stretches along the eastern coast of the Indo-Chinese peninsula and is slightly larger than Italy. It is ‘S-shaped’, broad in the north and south and very narrow in the centre (Fig. 1). The country's main cultivated areas are the Red River delta in the north and the Mekong delta containing Ho Chi Min city (Saigon) in the south.

A great number of terms in modern psychiatry, medicine and related disciplines originate from the Greek, including pathology, schizophrenia, ophthalmology, gynaecology, anatomy, pharmacology, biology, hepatology, homeopathy, allopathy and many others. There are also many terms that originate from figures from ancient Greek mythology (or the Greek words related to those figures) and I think that it might be interesting to take a look at some of them.