Towards a Unified Mental Health Service *Transcript of a speech to the North Eastern Council for Mental Welfare on the 26th May, 1939. The introductory sentences and nearly all personal references have been omitted. The transcript represents the substance of the speech, and does not purport to be an exact reproduction.

The essential unity of all mental health services has been obscured by entanglement with the law. This entanglement was inevitable because certain mental states necessitate the patient's segregation, and all restrictions on liberty demand, and rightly demand, legal safeguards against their abuse. But, while it was inevitable that mental medicine should be entangled with the law, the results of this entanglement are in many ways unfortunate. The law proceeds on the assumption that people are either sane or insane. Such