When I was at school the big IT everyone talked about, some explored avidly and others shunned nervously was sex. In psychiatry today, as in so many other fields IT is information technology. This article is a polemic. I believe IT (the new sort) is indispensable for modern mental health care. In the British National Health Service we have a window of opportunity to get IT right and if clinicians fail to act decisively and quickly, there isa risk that the chance will be lost.

The introduction of supervision registers for mentally ill people according to the NHS Executive Guidelines in February 1994 aroused debate among psychiatrists. This paper highlights many of the issues and describes the development of the supervision register at one medium secure unit.

This paper examines the use of Section 17 trial leave from local psychiatric units to regional secure units in order to facilitate the return of patients to local services when higher security is no longer necessary. The current national shortage of medium secure beds is exacerbated by such patients when general psychiatric services are unwilling to have them back. Experience from the regional secure units in the old South Western Region has shown beneficial effects of the use of Section 17 trial leave in this way.

A descriptive study of a psychiatric probation clinic based in South Wales is presented. Over a three year period, 100 probation clients were assessed by forensic psychiatrists at the request of the Probation Services in South Wales. The majority of these clients were mentally disordered, with common diagnoses being personality disorder (35%), substance misuse (11%), schizophrenia (10%) and post-traumatic stress disorder (9%). The non-attendance rates for these clients was 0% for the first and 13.3% for subsequent appointments. Psychiatric probation clinics seem to be analogous to general psychiatric clinics based in Primary Care.

This paper explores the extent of known child sexual and physical abuse in child psychiatric out-patient services in Leeds. We surveyed a one-month period, looking at all out-patient contacts, and found that at least 17.9% of patients had been physically or sexually abused and these patients took up 25.8% of out-patient time. When the 70 abused children were compared to a group matched for age group, clinical team and diagnosis It was found that they were more likely to be followed-up for longer and they received more therapeutic time over a given period than non-abused children. The implications for resources are discussed.

Most old age psychiatrists see long-stay care in good quality community hospitals as an essential component of a comprehensive service for older people suffering from mental illnesses (Jolley & Arie, 1992). Yet in recent years some Health Authorities have sought to reduce or close their long-stay beds and this has caused a great deal of controversy (Alzheimer's Disease Society, 1993; Benbow et al, 1994).

This paper presents the results of a survey of Junior doctors' opinions concerning the emergency tranquillisation of acutely disturbed, confused elderly patients. Although the majority of respondents gave recommendations within current guidelines, there were large variations In drug dose, and the choice of psychotropic agent may have been determined more by availability than rational prescribing practice.

It is important to ensure that the financial provision received by the long-stay psychiatric population is maintained as their care is relocated from hospitals to the community. A survey of the provision made by the 20 community homes to which Horton Hospital patients have been resettled was conducted. Comparison with the provision received by patients prior to resettlement revealed that the clothing allowance provided for patients without savings in Horton is often not maintained in the community and that resettled patients receive widely differing and frequently much smaller provision for clothing.

Although there are some well recognised physical disorders such as intracranial lesions that can present with mental illness, many psychiatric conditions do not appear to be associated with underlying somatic complaints. However, a number of recent studies have shown that there are often high rates of concurrent medical conditions among acute psychiatric in-patients that were previously undiagnosed or unsuspected. The author illustrates this point by presenting two case studies in which a significant medical condition was only identified after physical examination on a psychiatric unit.

We describe our experience of running a group using active therapy techniques for adults with a teaming disability, and briefly explore cognitive developmental theory in an attempt to understand some of our observations.

There is a growing pressure on universities to review their curriculum for undergraduate medical students in the light of the new General Medical Council (GMC) Education Committee recommendations (1993). One major recommendation was for universities to develop a ‘core curriculum’ for every medical discipline. In psychiatry, the curriculum for undergraduate medical students has always varied between universities. We propose a broad design of a core curriculum that consists of eight modules covering what is considered vital to the subject and relevant to the student's future medical practice. The curriculum is designed to be taught in pre-clinical as well as clinical years in an attempt to achieve full integration and aspires to succeed in eliminating this traditional divide.

In response to the expressed needs of trainees for training in the planning development, and evaluation of mental health services, a short course was designed and is described here. The course was run several times and proved flexible enough to be presented to either multidisciplinary, inter-agency audiences or to a solely medical audience.

In 1990 a UK psychiatrist and community psychiatric nurse (CPN) went to Belize, in Central America, to set up a comprehensive mental health service, based on community clinics staffed by psychiatric nurse practitioners. This work was completed by 1992. In 1994 two medical students visited Belize for eight weeks to review the new mental health service.

John Collee, in his column in The Observer, said that a febrile illness should be compulsory for every doctor, as it reminds one of what being a patient is like. Having been ill recently myself, I can only endorse this view. I rather overdid it in that I acquired a severe head injury which resulted in admission to hospital for six months. As a psychiatrist with a head injury I found myself in a near unique position in that I not only had the experience of being a patient but can now understand some of the psychological processes of recovering from a head injury. Although neuropsychiatry was a field I was interested in, I would not have chosen this method of investigating it!