Since the establishment of the Social and Community Section of the College, it has been apparent that differences exist in the viewpoints of its members on such questions as the role of the psychiatrist in the general community, how services are to be evaluated, what are the functional limits of psychiatry in the population and whether ‘community psychiatry’ is a unitary concept (and if so, whether it implies a generally accepted pattern of services, such as that proposed in 1975 in Better Services for the Mentally Ill).

While sociologists and sociologically-minded historians cast a baleful eye over the global history of mental treatment in the last two centuries, others—consultants, administrators or psychologists, present or past members of psychiatric hospital staffs—prove willing to devote much toil to the writing of detailed, often scholarly and always affectionate accounts of the origins and development of their own respective institutions, produced either spontaneously or on the occasion of some centenary or even bicentenary celebration. For the most part these appear in brochure form, but in a few instances they reach the dimension of full-size hardbacks. An attempt will be made here to review briefly a number of such publications which have appeared in recent years, including one whose authors have chosen to deal with establishments long-since defunct and forgotten, rather than with their own flourishing one.

Rehabilitation is a subject of topical interest in psychiatry and the Royal College of Psychiatrists has laid down guidelines of practice in its publication Psychiatric Rehabilitation in the 1980s. More detailed advice is given in Wing and Morris's (1981) practical manual for people involved in this work. Morgan and Cheadle (1981) make the point that consultants appointed to posts with a special interest in and responsibility for rehabilitation often have no special knowledge of or experience in the field and have to learn as they go along. This was the case with me when I took up my post in March 1978. Having learnt something from colleagues, from my reading and from my own experience, I thought that I needed to look elsewhere and see at first hand what experts in the sphere were doing. I was granted six weeks' study leave in the Spring of 1981 and arranged to spend five weeks at the Maudsley Hospital and a week at Southampton. I also visited Montrose for the Scottish Division's meeting on rehabilitation.

The locking up of psychiatric patients has become a delicate issue, and raises more than questions of consent and of civil liberties. Up to about 20 years ago it was very formally regulated. No patient could be secluded without the authority in writing of the medical superintendent or the responsible consultant, and the hours of starting and finishing seclusion had to be recorded in a special book. Woe betide any nurse or junior doctor who was found to have shut up a patient without higher authority or without record. One of the duties of a ward doctor in a psychiatric hospital was to do surprise checks on single rooms to see if someone was locked in unofficially. This and the other rules with the force of law had been established because of many abuses earlier uncovered.