Myanmar, until recently known as Burma, is a developing nation in south-east Asia. Burmese kings and emperors ruled this land until 1885, when it fell into the hands of the British. It gained its independence in 1948. Burma has a mainly agricultural economy and has a rich fertile soil. At one stage in the post-war history Myanmar was renowned as ‘the rice bowl of the world’. It is blessed with abundant natural resources such as teak and precious stones. Myanmar covers a land area twice that of the British Isles with a population of around 42 million.

At a Regional meeting of Members and Fellows of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, held in Cairo in April 1994, a strong initiative to promote Abbasiah Psychiatric Hospital as a teaching centre was put forward. The President, Registrar and Dean made a preliminary visit to the hospital and met with Dr S. Al-Kott, the Medical Director, and agreed to offer assistance on behalf of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. It was anticipated that Abbasiah would benefit through improved recruitment into medical and nursing posts, and by the injection of renewed interest in its large patient population.

Diagnosing a man who has travelled back from the future and who, in the present, speaks of the future as the past causes no problems: paranoid schizophrenia. Thus is Bruce Willis misunderstood in Twelve Monkeys (1995). Neither this, nor Brad Pitt as a patient with schizophrenia should distract us; once more we have a film in which a psychiatrist develops a dubious relationship with a patient. Despite evidence of the destructive impact on patients (Russell, 1993; Jehu, 1994), in films it has become almost normal.

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937), a musician of the highest order, died in a state of dementia. A genius of orchestration, a successful experimenter in musical forms and styles; he was at his best when given to composing small-scale constructions. His musical miniatures combine an extraordinary expressiveness with an unparalleled, almost mechanical precision. The latter quality provoked Stravinsky into calling him a “Swiss clock-maker of music”.

The decision to use a neuroleptic in people with epilepsy (PWE) depends on the nature of the psychosis being treated. In some cases a neuroleptic is not required and an adjustment of the antiepileptic drug therapy may be all that is necessary. Antiepileptic drug therapy itself can cause psychosis and this, as well as other aetiologies, should be considered. The choice of neuroleptic in PWE depends on: the nature of the patient's psychosis, including the temporal relationship with seizures and/or any relationship to antiepileptic drug therapy; the epileptogenicity of the neuroleptic; antiepileptic drugs; the efficacy of the neuroleptic; and individual tolerability of side-effects.

In common with other psychiatric units throughout the land, we have been struggling to come to terms with the Government directives regarding the Care Programme Approach. A great deal of time has been spent attempting to devise a system which is workable and useful but which might leave some time for face-to-face contact with patients; implementing it forces the psychiatrist into a catch–22 situation. If things are seriously wrong for a patient, the psychiatrist could be criticised for not putting somebody on CPA, or criticised for putting them on it but not carrying the process through thoroughly enough. In spite of this, I have participated in the scheme, if only because the consensus would seem to be that it is necessary to have the system in place, mainly as a defensive measure or in the hope of ensuring adequate resources. My overwhelming feeling, however, has been that it has been a time-consuming way of formalising good practice, and that the time spent filling in the forms would be better spent talking to the patients. I have always felt uncomfortable listing needs and solutions with the patient and ‘the team’, because it seemed reductionist, but I thought that this was my idiosyncratic response, and that I should get on with it. Recently, however, there was a near disaster with a patient which served to strengthen my reservations.

Preservation of the world's rainforests and other natural habitats can be argued for from several points of view. Maintaining biodiversity and preventing the ‘greenhouse effect’ are two commonly stated objectives. A less altruistic reason is that many of the floral species in such habitats remain unstudied and could yield new and important drugs to treat human diseases. Many of the drugs we use today are derived from plants or are their synthetic derivatives.

While waiting for a delayed departure at Goa airport recently, I engaged in conversation with a fellow frustrated passenger who happened to be an American tourist. Upon discovering that I had spent eight months in Goa initiating a field study on common mental disorders in primary care clinics, she expressed amazement exclaiming “but surely there can't be mental problems in this place… it's so beautiful and everyone seems so happy!”. After a brief moment wondering whether my companion was joking, I realised that my work in Goa could in itself seem a bit of a joke to colleagues and friends who associated Goa with being a holiday destination. Not only is the view that living in an apparent paradise is somehow conducive to better mental health a smokescreen, I had come to realise that mental illness was a considerable problem in this coastal state. Perhaps this essay could be an opportunity to explain why.

The Glasgow Media Group has published the first major study in this country on media coverage of mental health (Philo, 1996). This research examines both the content of press, television and films and how these relate to public beliefs about mental illness. It involved an extensive content analysis plus a series of focus group interviews. The results show clearly that ill-informed beliefs on, for example, the association of schizophrenia with violence can be traced directly to media accounts.

This study explores the rationale and need for a short-stay psychiatric unit at Al Ain (United Arab Emirates) district hospital. The paper describes the demographic and diagnostic characteristics of patients with brief admissions over 40% – of all psychiatric admissions – most of whom have neurotic, stress-related and adjustment disorders. Only 12% of patients were severely disabled and in about half the patients, anxiolytic or no medications were prescribed. Significant reduction of distress was achieved by brief admission. In current circumstances, we believe that the short-stay unit might be the best available and least costly option.

“Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings” (Julius Caesar. Act I, Scene 2).

Candidates' views regarding examinations in psychiatry have been highlighted in recent years. Few studies to date, however, have examined the views of the patients themselves toward the examination procedure. This study examines the knowledge and experience of a patient group participating in the College membership examinations. Providing patients with written information prior to the examinations significantly improves their knowledge and experience of the exam procedure.

Few subjects attract the attention of the public and the media more than violent acts committed by children and adolescents. All too frequently, politicians, policy-makers, practitioners, the public and media become caught up in destructive cycles of blame, engendering within society itself a sense of helplessness and powerlessness for and about violent young people.

Trainspotting, the “best British film of the decade”, arrived on 23 February 1996. Such were the expectations of the film (1996) that the face of its narrator-hero Renton (Ewan McGregor) appeared that month on the front cover of two influential London-based film magazines, Premiere and Sight and Sound. One year after its release, the film stands as both a critical and commercial success. The total Box Office receipts for Ireland, at IR £800 000 in the first 3 months, were comparable to a major Hollywood blockbuster. The film was still being screened 10 months later in Dublin's north inner city, the heartland of Dublin's heroin epidemic. Given its subject-matter, it is important to examine both the film itself, and its points of contact with the realities of drug addiction. In this respect, three questions suggest themselves: is the film showing anything new (representation), is it doing anything new (technique), and what is the film saying (ideology)?