ABSTRACT
Anyone involved in nursing during the recent past will have noticed some sweeping and far-reaching changes in the profession. One of the most obvious, which has been largely uncontested, is the title change that occurred in the early 1990s – from psychiatric nurse to mental health nurse. For many nurses, this change has probably been insignificant compared with other developments. In the UK, this has included the move to ‘community care’, more flexible boundaries between primary, secondary and tertiary care, the review of the Mental Health Act, the introduction of a National service framework (NSF) for mental health1 and the reviews of mental health nursing in England and Scotland. Furthermore, those nurses entering the profession more recently have only ever seen themselves as mental health nurses. The more poetic reader might conclude:
What is in a name? that which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet.
