Psychotherapy is unpopular in Hong Kong for various reasons. There is a gross deficiency of psychiatrists in our population of five million, and individual psychotherapy, being time-consuming, is regarded as a luxurious treatment to be chosen as a last resort. Moreover, there seems to be some reluctance among psychiatrists to accept psychoanalytic theory as relevant to Chinese culture. Although experience in psychotherapy is regarded as essential in training, it has been difficult to learn psychotherapy in Hong Kong because good training programmes are impossible without the availability of qualified supervisors. In the past year, we have gone through a training programme in dynamic psychotherapy involving a series of seminars, individual supervisions and Balint groups. The programme was made possible by the joint efforts of the three senior lecturers in our Department, who all came from abroad and were experienced in teaching psychotherapy. We would like to report our experience of the training and give our viewpoints as trainees. It will be helpful to describe the training in stages which bear striking similarities to the actual psychotherapeutic processes of our patients.

In the Mersey Regional Health Authority it has been decided that closure of at least one large mental illness hospital will take place within some 10 years and may be complete by 1992. To facilitate this the region has provided funding for every long-stay patient who might be discharged to the care of voluntary organisations or Social Services Departments and joint assessments of patients have been undertaken by the Health Service and Social Services staff.

Provision for dealing effectively with psychiatric emergencies has never been more important than now, with the current increasing emphasis on community care. There follows a description of the psychiatric emergency clinic in Southampton and the changes in its organisation and practice which have taken place over the last few years. It is hoped that this will stimulate discussion on the best methods of providing emergency psychiatric care.