ABSTRACT
Concern about the treatment of the mentally ill is currently at a high level in the contemporary developed world, fuelled by stories of murder and neglect resulting from policies of community care and by the concerns of the civil liberties movement that individual freedom is being threatened by proposals for Community Treatment Orders, which they see as coercive and authoritarian. Amongst the professionals whose job it is to provide care and treatment, mechanistically oriented psychiatrists argue for treatment with physical therapies whilst psychotherapeutically orientated practitioners protest at the use of what they consider to be largely inappropriate therapies. In the middle of the chaos and confusion that permeates so much of contemporary mental health care are the patients themselves and their families, whose already worrying situations are often compounded by problems in obtaining appropriate help and treatment. This is hardly surprising, given the complex issues that surround treatment for mental illness, and yet it is hard to avoid the conclusion that a difficult situation is made far worse by the attitudes of many involved in the care of the mentally ill.
