Mr Bates and the post office: The implications of the UK post office scandal for the taxonomy of trauma.

Objective: To explore the psychopathology of the victims of the UK Post Office scandal and the extent to which this can be adequately described by current classification of traumatic stress symptoms.

Design: Standard clinical interviews for the purposes of preparing medico-legal reports.

Setting: Face to face and virtual interviews.

Operational mental health. . .what practitioners and commanders should know.

Background: Mental Health support to military operations is well established as an integral part of military medicine. Unfortunately, Commanders often receive little or no training in how best to use their mental health assets or what their capabilities are. Conversely, members of a Field Mental Health Team frequently have no operational experience and try to merely translate their civilian practice onto the battlefield.

Structural inequalities, knife crime: A qualitative study.

The importance and impact of youth violence is increasingly being recognised and is a cause of international concern. In the UK, youth violence, specifically knife crime, is on the increase and has resulted in the deaths of many young people. In order to explore the impact of knife crimes on mental health and wellbeing of individuals, a number of focus groups were conducted with 24 professionals from multiple agencies.

Youth violence and knife crime in ethnic minorities in the UK: A review of the literature.

Background: Youth violence and knife crime is increasing dramatically, so much so it has been described as a global epidemic. The social, economic and political forces fuelling this rise mean that minority groups are particularly affected.

Aim: This paper reviews the literature primarily from a UK perspective, and illustrates the disparate factors that are influencing the rise in youth violence and knife crime and illustrates the complexities of integrating the perspectives of different disciplines into coherent intervention strategies.

General psychiatry, still in no-man's land after all these years.

Mental health services have changed beyond recognition in my 38-year career. In this editorial I reflect on those changes and highlight the issues that undermine patient care and damage staff morale. In particular, modern mental health services have undermined the therapeutic relationship, the bedrock underpinning all psychiatric treatment.

What's in a memory? PTSD and working with survivors of psychological trauma.

Background: Treating the consequences of psychological trauma and PTSD is of major concern to psychiatry although outcomes are often rather poor, often giving to the fact that the diagnose of PTSD is misused and no consideration of the trauma settings and its consequences on the brain.

Aims: This paper looks at the impact of false or induced memories in the trauma narrative and their potential impact on therapy with examples from the everyday world. The consequences of this in civilian therapy sessions is discussed compared to the classical debriefing for PTSD in the armed forces.

Psychiatric colonialism, PTSD and the Western psychiatric diagnostic tradition . . . is one man's food another man's poison?

Sadly, much of the world is no stranger to Psychological Trauma, particularly in poorer areas with poor health infrastructure. Western Aid Organisations frequently deploy to such areas bringing with them a western psychiatric tradition of nosology and therapy which may not be appropriate in other cultures. We argue that imposing a western system of diagnosis and treatment may not only undermine local culture but may also be bad for the patient.

Ukraine: Meeting the mental health needs of service veterans.

The current conflict in Ukraine is a tragedy of epic proportions that without doubt is causing serious psychological damage with inevitable long term consequences affecting combatants, civilians, not to mention displaced refugees. This paper focuses on the mental health needs of service veterans returning home to a country, devastated by the current conflict.

The presentation of depression in the British Army.

Background: The British Army is predominately composed of young men, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, in which Depression is a common mental health disorder.

Objectives: To construct a predictive model detailing the presentation of depression in the army that could be utilised as an educational and clinical guideline for Army clinical personnel.

Method And Participants: Utilising a Constructivist Grounded Theory, phase 1 consisted of 19 interviews with experienced Army mental health clinicians.

The costs of conflict: meeting the mental health needs of serving personnel and service veterans.

Military mental health has, until recently, been a neglected and marginalized area of interest and although both World Wars saw important advances, in peacetime we typically forget lessons learned in earlier conflicts. Since 2003 however, with high intensity war-fighting on two fronts involving the service personnel of many nations, attention has, once again focused on the immediate and long-term emotional and psychological impact of combat. Whilst we know a lot about posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), much less attention has been paid to a variety of other equally, if not more salient yet superficially less dramatic problems facing service personnel deployed on operations, but which are much more likely to lead to mental disorder than traumatic events and the 'horrors of war'.

Self harm on prescription: the lesser of two evils?

This article reports an innovative method of using a diabetic lancet pen to reduce complex self-injurious behaviour and discuss the ethical considerations.

The Fair Deal campaign: a call to arms.

The UK healthcare economy is facing an unprecedented downturn, mental health services being particularly vulnerable. The Royal College of Psychiatrists' Fair Deal campaign is a potentially important tool to help protect services. However, like the College itself, it is only as strong as the membership, and requires individual commitment and involvement if it is to be effective.

Use of psychological decompression in military operational environments.

This article reviews the use of psychological decompression as applied to troops returning from active service in operational theaters. Definitions of the term are considered and a brief history is given. Current policies and practices are described and the question of mandatory decompression is considered.

Big brother is watching you--the ethical implications of electronic surveillance measures in the elderly with dementia and in adults with learning difficulties.

Electronic surveillance has insidiously seeped into the fabric of society with little public debate about its moral implications. Perceived by some as a sinister Orwellian tool of repression and social control, the new technologies offer comfort and security to others; a benevolent parental watchful eye. Nervousness at being watched has been replaced increasingly by nervousness if we're not.