The general psychiatrist as specialist

The role of the psychiatrist in the general hospital*

THE CURRENT trend for the National Health Psychiatric Service is to integrate it into the general hospital system. More psychiatrists are spending more time doing clinics in general hospitals. More have some or all of their beds in general hospitals. The overall advantages and disadvantages of this state of affairs have recently been propounded elsewhere, both in the U.K. (McKeown, 1966; R.M.P....

Positive experiences with a specialist as facilitator in general practice.

INTRODUCTION The use of facilitators for quality improvement in general practice has accelerated during the past decade. As general practitioners (GPs) or pharmacists have typically been used as facilitators, there is a lack of knowledge of how other professionals function as facilitators. This article explores the experiences and assessments of GPs and nurses participating in a project in whic...

The psychiatrist as archaeologist and architect

A colleague and I recently proposed a model to guide the description and reform of mental health services and to clarify service evaluation (Tansella & Thornicroft, 1998). The model, which we call the ‘mental health matrix’, consists of two dimensions, one temporal and one geographical. The temporal dimension comprises three phases: input (phase A), process (phase B) and outcome (phase C). The ...

Writing the Case—Pinel as Psychiatrist

introduction P hilippe Pinel’s Traité médico-philosophique sur l’aliénation mentale ou la manie, published in 1802, is the cardinal book of aliénisme (the French word for the nascent field of psychiatry), and the work that, according to the myth of the birth of rational psychiatry, breaks with the ancient medical practices of treating the mentally ill. In it, Pinel defines the psychiatrist’s fi...

The general practitioner and the specialist.