The Maudsley Hospital Junior Common Room (JCR) Complaints Book was opened on 28 January 1959 by the secretary of the JCR, Dr R. H. Cawley (RHC). Complaints were to be entered on the left-hand page only leaving the right “for replies thereto”.

This year, 1989, marks the 150th anniversary of the abolition of mechanical restraints at the Hanwell Asylum. It was, of course, John Conolly who carried out this large-scale experiment in the application of non-restraint at Hanwell. He was in charge of the diagnosis and treatment of the 800-odd pauper lunatics in this, the largest of the county asylums. Most of his patients had been insane for many years before their admission to Hanwell from the parish workhouses. The prospects of curing them were slim: Hanwell had the second lowest cure rate among the county asylums, a meagre 6% for the period 1835–1845 (Conolly, 1847).

Views differ as to whether it is feasible – or indeed desirable – to agree on a Code of Practice with respect to the clinical management of suicidal patients in psychiatric units (Morgan, 1988). At Fulbourn Hospital (Gardner, 1988) we have developed some guidelines which might, if suitably modified, be used elsewhere; they are appended below.

In August 1989 Meanwood Park Hospital, Leeds, the biggest hospital for mental handicap in the Yorkshire Health Region, reached the seventieth anniversary of its foundation. Like other hospitals for mental handicap. Meanwood Park is coming to the end of an era. The parkland of 134 acres, which has been the hospital's estate, and has existed for over 200 years, is to be sold in phases for housing schemes. Now is an opportune time to record the history of this hospital.

In a rash moment of bonhomie, having offered to one of the editors to write a personal view of psychiatry in the USA today, and with his encouragement to proceed, I find myself a long time later reflecting as to why the task seems to have been so daunting. Interpretations regarding my DSM-III-Axis II disorder apart, the numbers involved perhaps provide some of the reasons. There are 38,276 psychiatrists in this country, mostly paying dues ($300.00 per year) to the American Psychiatric Association, which has 76 district branches across the country, with between a few dozen and a few thousand members each; $428 billion spent on total personal health care in 1988, approximately two-thirds of which was covered by Federal Government programmes, of which $351 million went to the mental health sector; 150,000 patients treated for longer than one year in the long-term care psychiatric hospitals in this postdeinstitutionalisation era; and 6.5 million persons resident in nursing homes (at an estimated cost of $46 billion) of whom more than 50% are estimated to suffer from Alzheimer's disease. From such an array it is difficult to distill the essentials with much confidence as to their reliability or significance. What follows is therefore selective and impressionistic.