Hook, J. (2000) The role of psychodynamic psychotherapy in a modern general psychiatry service. . The first paragraph under the heading ‘The mental health task’, p. 462, should read: ‘As new treatment methods and refinements of traditional treatments have arisen from our greater understanding of psychiatric problems, so too have significantly different methods of providing mental health services. The treatments the service offers and the style in which it presents them traditionally depended to a large degree upon the passivity and compliance of patients and society. Increasingly, society is demanding not only higher standards of care but that patients should be treated with the respect due to each as an individual. I would argue that the fundamental psychodynamic task has not changed’.