Editorial November 2005

This has been a difficult year for the Society, with its membership tending to continue to age and decline, and without the influx of a generation of active younger psychiatrists to assure its future life and health. The Chairman's report for the Annual General Meeting this month will deal with the initiatives taken on a number of controversial developments in the profession about which the Society's officers have made representations, with limited impact?

Since Dr Tomlin's celebration of Victory in 2004 The Suspensions Group has continued in being to monitor the continuing situation regarding suspended doctors, most of whom are eventually absolved. A recent correspondent has suggested that " - - what the government and its agency NCAS is trying to do is disguising the number of suspended doctors by using different words to label us!".

A main concern of the Society has for many years been with day-to-day working difficulties and challenges experienced by doctors in the ever more bureaucratic NHS, and these have not been eased by government strategies which need careful scrutiny, and not only by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Questions have been raised about some of the topics discussed in Editorials since the resignation of the former Editor who had founded SCPNET. There has been interest in the functioning of the Freedom of Information Act, which eventually came into operation this January, but it has also been reasonably suggested that the issue of Freedom of Information may not be as troublesome to most psychiatrists as "the other one thousand and one problems thrown at us each day!" Another correspondent has endorsed the rights of editors to provide information "which is of interest to themselves as well as others", and I have over several years researched the area of the Mental Health Review Tribunal which, although it may seem somewhat peripheral to the regular daily round, has proved to be a paradigm for many experiences in public service.

Many psychiatrists have found their way to the Society after finding themselves unexpectedly embroiled in criticism and the sorts of disputes that used to be rarities. Responding to any of those may demand easier access to information than may be readily forthcoming from government departments.

Although there have been some interesting contributions to SCPNET received and published during the year, submissions of papers for the Journal have been disappointingly few, so I am taking the opportunity this month to expand upon my brief mention of Heather Brooke's invaluable book, Your Right to Know, which has now been received for review.

Having studied Your Right to Know I recommend it as an essential source for navigating the ramifications of the government departments which psychiatrists in professional difficulties need to understand better. I am only sorry that it was not available earlier during my own long-running Quest for Fair Process and Natural Justice within the branches of the Department of Health and the Lord Chancellor's Department, which brought me into contact with the Society of Clinical Psychiatrists, that quest from Whistleblower to vexatious correspondent persevered with until the ultimate achievement of a face-to-face meeting with a senior civil servant in September, long before requested and previously long denied.

P G Woolf

SCPNET editorials do not necessarily represent the views of the Society unless so stated.