It is with great regret that I have the honour of announcing the death of the medical profession's maxim of the Hypocratic Oath. No longer is it the case that those who suffer illnesses are afforded the protection of the profession or vice versa those who do not suffer illnesses are given protection by The State. Cases in point are any number of mental health hospital wards around the country. A country for which our soldiers are dying by the score in a foreign political play which nobody quite understands to maintain our 'freedom'. What freedom?

There was a time that if you were sick then you could count on your good friendly doctor to administer the correct treatment; a family doctor who had seen you grow up over the years and knew you without having to look up your details on the computer. Those days have now sadly passed. It is true that communities are now more transitory but all the same, by the definition of community, so are all of the professions. Professionals come and go at their own whim resulting in no continuity of 'treatment'. What we are therefore left with is a utilitarian approach to welfare which benefits no one except those who stand to make money from it, i.e. the very same professionals we place our trust in to get us back onto the road to recovery. Hence we are left with a gaping chasm in the Hypocratic Oath as capitalism and an increasingly beleagured state-based system pressure its long-held sound and ethical genesis to its ultimate failure.

One can now be incarcerated in a Mental Health Unit for simply not exhibiting conformist behaviour, given sometimes quite lethal cocktails of drugs and even subjected to Victorian standards of electric shock 'treatment'. These and other fundamentally basic Psychological practices in the UK may not even be used but could well be threatened to be used in an attempt to recondition a patient. Psychology 101. One can further be subjected to interrogation techniques whilst under the influence of these drugs or generally disprespected by those charged with our care. There's nothing funnier for a stressed-out NHS worker than taking the micky out of a dazed and confused patient. And who wouldn't be dazed and confused if picked up by the police whilst under the influence of some psychotic or other cerebral dysfunction, handcuffed and bundled in the back of a police car? Simply the whole system is injury upon insuly; a catalogue of errors requiring a jolly good overhaul.

Additionally, given that Psychiatry is not a 'sexy' topic it does not attract the brightest minds in the country. Already the laughing stock of the medical profession Psychiatrists utilise guess work amongst their arsenal of weapons. They try to diagnose a disease on the basis of an Approved Social Worker's five minute interview and administer drugs in almost random fashion until they start to observe a 'result.

And these are only the issues concerning patients time in the insitution themselves. Even the so-called 'after care' is shambolic. Patients are either siphoned off into the care of various programmes or, worse, left to fend for themselves in services which seldom talk to each other. There is no such thing as 'joined up' thinking across the whole of the system pertaining to deal with Mental Health issues. And, given that 1 in 3 of the population is supposed to suffer from mental health 'problems' at some point in their lives then why is all this inept practice simply the case?

I believe it all stems from the stigma attached to mental health by society at large. If we could only break down this stigma and overcome the tragedy of ostracising what become third rate citizens then I would hope that some of these serious issues could begin to be addressed. We could start to attract more worth professionals to the care of individuals who simply have not been able to withstand the harsh realities of the society around them. Society is far from perfect, it always has been, but shouldn't we be caring for those - as part of the social contract - who cannot conform to its many demands for whatever reason? Torture, interrogation and mis-application of Psychology have no real place in a truly caring soceity. Surely?