To describe the extent and variation in the use of Guardianship nationally. The Directors of Social Services were asked to provide details about Guardianship cases on two separate occasions one year apart.

There were 428 new Guardianship cases in 12 months. At the second enumeration, 73% of cases were within the mental illness category and 47% of these had serious mental illness.

There is much variation in the use of Guardianship. Further developments of this study will explore the reasons for this variation and will ascertain clinicians' views on Guardianship, supervised discharge and other community treatment orders.

The use of the term ‘client’ has become increasingly popular among non-medical staff in psychiatric practice. We sought to describe the preferences and attitudes of people attending a psychiatric clinic to the terms patient and client. A questionnaire and case note review was employed.

147 people completed the questionnaire, of these 77% preferred the term patient. There was no subgroup that preferred the term client. Attitudes towards the two terms were significantly different, with a greater antipathy demonstrated towards the term client.

The majority of people attending a psychiatric clinic prefer the use of the term patient; the term client is disliked.

To implement the Royal College of Psychiatrists' guidelines for the practice of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and measure the impact of such implementation on the quality of treatment. Treatment of ECT for periods of six months before and after implementation of the guidelines were studied. The effect on producing adequate treatments and the actions taken by the administrating doctor were noted.

Once the guidelines were in place there was a slight improvement in the proportion of treatments considered therapeutic and the doctor was more likely to take appropriate action following an inadequate treatment. However, it was also clear that despite the guidelines being available they were not followed in a significant number of instances.

Implementation of the guidelines is not easy and there needs to be considerable effort to ensure they are used. When they are followed there is an improvement in the practice of ECT.

Quantifying the relationship between waiting time and clinic attendance in child and adolescent psychiatry would allow better estimation of the resources needed to eliminate waiting lists in specific initiatives. All cases on a waiting list were sent a questionnaire, return of the questionnaire being necessary for an appointment to be made. Those who did not return the questionnaire or did not attend were contacted and a reason obtained whenever possible. The data were analysed using Cox regression.

Most who did not return their questionnaires had been waiting less than four weeks or longer than 30 weeks. Questionnaire return seemed a good estimate of intention to attend. Other factors improving questionnaire return were younger patient age, previous experience of the service, a clear common reason for referral, and a non-general practitioner referral source.

Waiting lists in child and adolescent psychiatry may have a natural ‘endpoint’ at 30 weeks beyond which families give up, while waiting lists of less than one-month may be too short to lose transient problems. Failure to include this and other indicators of non-attendance may lead to overestimates of resources needed to remove queues for treatment. Questionnaires may be useful in identifying those intending to attend.

A survey of 50 in-patient forensic health care and prison services in England, Wales and Scotland was employed to evaluate: (a) how severe personality disorder is assessed; and (b) how assessments compare with recommendations concerning standardised assessment by the Working Group on Psychopathic Disorder (Reed, 1994).

Seventy per cent of services responded, of whom 40% formally assessed personality disorder. Fifty-four instruments were routinely employed. Assessments of personality structure and cognitive/emotional styles were more common than structured diagnostic instruments or ratings of interpersonal functioning. Of the assessment tools, 25.7% of services provided at least one suggested by Reed (1994).

A nationally agreed, focused repertoire of instruments should be encouraged within secure forensic settings offering assessments to individuals with severe personality disorder.

We aimed to find out how patients on clozapine felt about clozapine treatment. A structured questionnaire was given to 1284 consecutive patients attending 27 clozapine clinics in the UK.

The response rate was 44.4% (570 forms returned). This cohort of responders to the questionnaire consisted, for the most part, of Caucasian males who had been taking clozapine for more than 2 years. Respondents expressed largely favourable views on clozapine treatment. For example, 86.1% claimed to feel better on clozapine and 88.6% claimed to prefer to remain on clozapine than to change to another drug. Many patients stated that they disliked having to undergo blood testing, but a large majority (87.0%) felt that the advantages of clozapine outweighed disadvantages. All other responses supported this overall favourable view of clozapine therapy.

Patients stabilised on clozapine are largely content with their treatment. These results suggest that clozapine is effective as assessed by patients' own standards and that adherence to therapy is likely to be good.

Computerised self-help psychotherapies are fast becoming part of psychiatric practice. The aim of the study was to assess potential user preferences for the delivery of self-help psychotherapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and phobic anxiety disorders. A postal survey was undertaken of enquirers responding to a teletext article on self-help psychotherapies for OCD and agoraphobia. Subjects were asked their preferences for the delivery of self-help services for anxiety disorders, their acceptance or refusal of general practitioner (GP) referrals for such therapy, and how much they would be willing to pay for such a service.

Of 326 questionnaires sent out 113 completed questionnaires were returned (35%). Twenty-seven per cent of respondents did not wish to access such services via their GP, 91% wanted access via a computer system and respondents were willing to pay an average of $10 per computer session (range 0–100).

Computerised self-help psychotherapies for OCD, phobic anxiety disorders and depression are becoming part of everyday clinical practice. This may be the first survey directly asking potential users about their preferred access to self-help psychotherapies for anxiety disorders. A significant proportion of responders did not wish to go via their GP to receive therapy and the vast majority welcomed therapy delivered by some form of computer system.

The study explored job-stress experienced by psychiatrists, its effect on their lives and the coping mechanisms used.

The response rate was 62%. The younger group reported higher stress levels and used more positive coping strategies than the older groups. Female doctors were more likely to report being stressed. Aspects of the job experienced as most stressful include on-call duties and dealing with difficult and hostile relatives.

Anxietyand depressive symptoms are reported frequently in psychiatrists. Strategies to deal with the identified causes need to be put in place.

Supervised discharge orders (SDOs) enable a degree of compulsion to be exerted over patients in the community. We aimed to establish the level of, and reasons for, their use and consultants' perceptions of their effectiveness. All mental health provider NHS trusts in England were surveyed, and a random sample cohort of cases was identified. Community responsible medical officers (CRMOs) were surveyed using a semi-structured questionnaire.

We identified 596 cases subject to SDOs in 170 mental health provider trusts (100%) in England, involving 18% of consultant psychiatrists. Responses were obtained from the CRMOs of 185 patients (84%) from a sample of 221 cases. The SDO was described as helpful or very helpful in 77% of cases in which it had been in place for over 2 months. In 58% of cases the SDO was intended to improve medication compliance, and in 46% of these cases it was perceived to be effective in doing so.

SDOs are not widely used in England. However, for those patients who are made subject to supervised discharge, the order appears to be effective and may improve medication compliance, despite the absence of the legal power to enforce treatment.

A postal audit of practice in the South-East Thames Region of England before and after the Bournewood judgements.

There was a trebling in the rate of admission under section of elderly incapacitated patients occurred prior to the Houseof Lords' ruling. By the time of the ruling many consultants had not changed their practice. There is now, however, no impact of the ruling upon clinical practice. The majority of consultants remain concerned about the lack of safeguards for mentally incapacitated elders at the present time.

Although the Bournewood judgement was expected by some to have a permanent impact upon the management of the mentally incapacitated this has not happened. There is a need for effective and resource efficient safeguards for the mentally incapacitated to be developed.

Information given to patients about side-effects of their medication plays a key role in future adherence. It is possible that when antipsychotic medication is prescribed routinely, insufficient information is given to them. In order to investigate the amount of information doctors feel they need to give to patients when they are prescribing conventional antipsychotic medication, all the clinical doctors at a large mental health trust were surveyed by anonymous questionnaire.

Overall, doctors said they gave large amounts of information to patients about possible side-effects of anti-psychotic drugs, but some side effects we discussed far more frequently than others.

The selectivity of information given to patients appears to reflect the doctors perception of what is important. This might not correlate with what the patient may wish to be told. Discussions with patients about side-effects may need to be more comprehensive than they currently are.

A postal questionnaire was used to compare the pharmacological management of alcohol withdrawal as carried out by a group of general practitioners and specialist alcohol services.

General practitioners were significantly more likely to prescribe chlormethiazole, less likely to use B vitamins and less likely to admit patients with a history of withdrawal complications.

General practitioners need training in order to improve their management of alcohol withdrawal.