OBJECTIVE To identify the various potential manifestations of the dual-role dilemma in the psychiatric ethics literature. METHOD The terms 'dual role', 'dual agency', 'overlapping roles', and 'double agency' were searched on the electronic databases PubMed, Medline, Embase and PsychInfo. Classic papers in the field of psychiatric ethics and their references were manually searched. Papers were...

A cross-sectional study on psychiatric morbidity was conducted in an urban area of Pondicherry between October 1988 and July 1989. A sample of 225 families covering 1115 people of all ages was selected by simple random technique. The prevalence rate was 99.4 per 1000, the prevalence among children being 58.6 per 1000. It was found that age, education, occupation and marital status had significa...

A series of Community Psychiatric Clinics were conducted in different blocks of Sundarban region of West Bengal. One of the primary objectives of this was to collect clinical epidemiological data on psychiatric morbidity in the region. A total of 26 clinics were conducted in Sagar, Kakdwip, Canning and Gosaba block of the Sundarban region during the period from end 1998 to end 2000. A total of ...

Author’s Affiliation: 1Professor and Head; 2Assistant Professor, Dept of Community Medicine, Andaman & Nicobar Islands Institute of Medical Sciences (ANIIMS), Port Blair; 3Associate Professor, Dept of Community Medicine, MGM Medical College & LSK Hospital, Kishanganj, Bihar, India; 4Statistician, Dept of Community Medicine, Andaman & Nicobar Islands Institute of Medical Sciences (ANIIMS), Port ...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this policy paper is to put recent developments in Dutch mental health reform in an international perspective and draw conclusions for future directions in policy. CONTEXT OF THE CASE: The practice of Western psychiatry in the second half and particularly in the last decade of the 20th century has fundamentally changed. Dutch psychiatry has traditionally been prominen...

OBJECTIVES This study examined the attitudes of senior residents in psychiatry toward persons with intellectual disabilities. Examining residents' attitudes will highlight areas of training that could be enhanced to better prepare psychiatrists to work with individuals with intellectual disabilities. METHOD A questionnaire was distributed to senior psychiatry residents at a Canada-wide prepar...

Robert Chaplin is a consultant in general adult psychiatry who works with an inner-London community mental health team (Tooting & Furzedown CMHT, Springfield Hospital, 61 Glenburnie Road, London SW17 OJB; tel/fax: 0181 682 6439) and Honorary Senior Lecturer at St George’s Hospital Medical School. He has received training in learning disability at Registrar and Senior Registrar levels including ...

Psychiatry has not always been a major clinical discipline in medical schools. Although the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Cape Town (UCT) celebrates its Centenary in 2012, a closely aligned major psychiatric hospital is older than the Medical School, while the Department of Psychiatry is only 50 years old. These differing dates reflect the history of and challenge for psychiat...