Psychological knowledge is important to psychiatrists, both because of the psychological concepts central to some fields, such as normal human development, and because of the psychological procedures widely used in both the assessment and treatment of patients. Psychology is taught to trainee psychiatrists as part of their preparation for the MRCPsych examination, mainly through the teaching for the Preliminary Test of the examination which covers the ‘sciences basic to psychiatry’. In practice, the content of the test covers basic psychopathology and the neurosciences, as well as the behavioural and social sciences. While the Royal College of Psychiatrists does not itself produce a detailed syllabus for the examination, the Association of University Teachers of Psychiatry (AUTP) has prepared guidelines for students and teachers for these subjects. Since the Royal College has ‘commended’ these guidelines and published them (Bulletin, April 1982, 6, 54–56) they have a semi-official status.

As is often the case, Oxford was damp and cold, but this did not deter the more athletic of us from trotting round lovely Christchurch meadows, or the more aesthetic from visiting an exhibition of Impressionist drawings in the Bodleian. The unpretentious, even homely, character of University College helped to draw a quite disparate group of psychotherapists together. This in turn was reinforced by the personal quality of all the formal presentations, and by the repeated experiences of small groups whose composition is stable. They allow the development of some degree of relationship both personal and intellectual in the course of two days.

A conference on the premenstrual syndrome (PMS) was held in September 1984 in Philadelphia, USA, jointly supported by the Ethics and Values in Science and Technology (EVIST) Section of the National Science Foundation, and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (USA). Twenty-two international research workers in the area of PMS met for a week's closed workshop discussing the scientific, legal and ethical issues raised by the present attention being given to the syndrome. PMS is now popular in the USA, with many private clinics and programmes being developed. Ten of the twenty-two invited participants were from medicine (six of these were psychiatrists, two general practitioners and four gynaecologists); the remainder were sociologists, anthropologists, lawyers, physiologists, philosophers, behavioural geneticists, psychologists, social workers, criminologists and bioethicists—an indicator of the diversity of the effects of and research into premenstrual syndrome. There were three UK participants—a general practitioner, a gynaecologist, and a psychiatrist. As the UK psychiatrist I felt that two in particular of the concensus opinions reached by such a diverse group would be of interest to readers of the Bulletin.

In June 1985 a group of researchers involved in the study of alcohol problems in general practice in the UK met informally in York for discussion and exchange of ideas. The meeting was arranged under the auspices of Professor David Robinson of the Addiction Research Centre, Institute for Health Studies of the University of Hull. The group included GPs, psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, and other related research workers.

In their major piece of research, ‘Fifteen Thousand Hours. Secondary Schools and their Effects on Children’, Rutter and his colleagues showed how, with the right ethos, secondary schools could be a powerful force, promoting good outcomes over a range of measures, including attendance, exam results, behaviour in school and delinquency outside it.

After 30 years of psychiatry in England I've just had a cold plunge through Canadian psychiatry as a staffman in an Ontario general hospital. Because science is international and a good many British psychiatrists work in Canada I expected clinical practice to be the same: but psychiatry is different on the two sides of the Atlantic. Before my raw, insistent perceptions of these differences fade, as they do so quickly when one adapts to a new life, I will write some of them down. However faulty they form a rough mirror in which we can all examine our own professional faces.

Representatives from 19 countries met by invitation to discuss their most recent research findings at the Third Biannual Workshop on Schizophrenia, Schladming, Austria 26–31 January 1986, organised by Dr T. J. Crow (MRC, Northwick Park Hospital) and Professor S. R. Hirsch (Charing Cross Hospital Medical School). The thrust was highly biological with biochemistry and brain structure much in the fore, assisted by much greater resolution of imageing techniques and the development of specific ligands for synaptic receptors.

Psychiatry has a long past but a short history in Iran. References to causes and treatment of mental disorders can be found in parts of the Avesta, the holy book of pre-Islamic Iranians. Early muslim physicians like Tabari, Majusi, Razi and Ibn Sina, who were mostly born and brought up in Iran, have devoted long sections of their books to a discussion of mental disorders under the general title of ‘the diseases of the head and the brain’. In fact, the oldest medical textbook in modern Persian—which was completed around 970 A.D.—was written by a practising physician who claims to have been known as a ‘doctor of the insane’ by his contemporaries.

Although behaviour therapy, primarily in the form of gradual and prolonged exposure to phobic situations, is now well established as the treatment of choice in most cases of agoraphobia not all suitable patients receive this treatment. This is partly because behaviour therapy is time-consuming and, although there have been great gains made in recent years with the establishment of training for nurses in behaviour therapy, in many peripheral hospitals few nurses have the necessary training. There are increasing demands made upon the time of the community psychiatric nurse and it seems likely that the proportion spent in behaviour therapy will be squeezed to a level that will deprive some patients of its benefits.

Much of the initiative for this symposium, held between 6 and 8 January 1985, came from Professor Shridhar Sharma, President of the Indian Psychiatric Society, and the 38th Annual Conference of the Indian Psychiatric Society, at which there was a record number of participants, was held immediately before and in the same place as the Symposium. Many of the psychiatrists who attended the IPS Conference stayed on for the Symposium, where they somewhat outnumbered their foreign colleagues. The premises were the Medical College and Hospital named after Sawai Man Singhji, a Maharaja of Jaipur. The complex is a little way outside a crenellated pink wall surrounding the equally pink and fascinating Jaipur in Rajasthan, North India. The site, enhanced by a large marquee for refreshments, was very pleasant.

There has been increasing interest in recent years in the care of the terminally ill. Much of what has been written has been focussed on medical management and centred in hospices. The psychological dimension often appears neglected. The objective of this article is to outline the evolution, practice and problems of a liaison psychiatry input to the care of patients with terminal illness treated in a general hospital.