Electronic monitoring has been used in criminal justice and some health settings for three decades. Technological interventions are becoming more common in psychiatry, but may be a cause for ethical concerns and controversy. We discuss electronic monitoring as an aid to security and public safety in a forensic setting.

Schizophrenia is usually classified based on clinical presentation. However, the conventional paranoid–disorganised–residual distinctions have had limited clinical utility. Here we draw on the evidence for differences in pathophysiology underlying treatment response to propose a subclassification based on neurobiology to guide diagnostic testing and treatment.

The classification of mood disorders lacks precision and consequently there has been no recent meaningful advance in their treatment. By virtue of its therapeutic specificity, lithium responsivity offers an opportunity to diagnose a definitive subtype of mood disorders that may provide a platform for the development of targeted therapy.

Although hope is key to recovery, might the course of some people's mental illness be so severe that false promise is offered? This paper unpacks considerations and, after a critical analysis, concludes hope is still central to healing and personal well-being.

We argue that psychopathology, as the discipline that assesses and makes sense of abnormal human subjectivity, should be at the heart of psychiatry. It should be a basic educational prerequisite in the curriculum for mental health professionals and a key element of the shared intellectual identity of clinicians and researchers in this field.

Mental disorders are associated with suicidality and with stigma. Many consequences of stigma, such as social isolation, unemployment, hopelessness or stress, are risk factors for suicidality. Research is needed on the link between stigma and suicidality as well as on anti-stigma interventions and their effects on suicidality.

People with intellectual disabilities are at risk of premature death due to failings in healthcare provision. To prevent this, it is important for healthcare services to identify and flag not only vulnerable conditions (including intellectual disability, dementia and mental health problems), but also the specific adjustments needed by individual patients.