The College has recommended that the WHO Glossary of psychiatric terms should be in general use with the 9th International Classification of Diseases and has asked that the Department of Health and Social Security should support its being made available to all grades of psychiatric staff. (It is hoped in this way to achieve greater consistency in the recording of psychiatric diagnoses on form HMR 1 (Psych. I/P) for the purposes of the Mental Health Enquiry.) The Department of Health and Social Security issued a general letter on 5 April 1979, Ref. SRF/2/88 in which they stated: ‘It is hoped that hospital administrations will find it possible to make copies of the glossary available to all grades of psychiatric staff and to administrative and clerical staff in psychiatric records departments’. Copies of the Glossary, which replaces the previous WHO booklet on the 8th Revision of the ICD, are available from HMSO. The price is £4.20 per copy for orders of less than 50 copies; there is a discount on large orders.

At its meeting on 26 October 1979 Council heard of the threatened closure of a number of psychiatric units and related departments and expressed great concern that the current economic situation might seriously threaten the maintenance and development of essential services for the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped. We wish to stress the need for the closest consultation at all levels between administrators and members of the College so that cuts can be made which are effective economically with the least danger of reducing the services to patients. This is particularly important where ‘temporary’ closures are being considered where the normal consultative processes may be by-passed. Our specialty is recognized as still being relatively under-provided in comparison with other areas of medicine. Furthermore, it relies heavily on manpower and not on expensive apparatus, costly drugs or other resources besides personnel.

The Oxford scheme was established in 1971, since when it has developed considerably. The scheme comprises 25 trainees, and placements are arranged on 12 clinical firms or units, of which ten are in Oxford and two outside the city. Rotation takes place at six or twelve-month intervals.

A good doctor-patient relationship is central to the task of gathering information and providing treatment, especially in psychiatry. In a teaching hospital this relationship may be complicated by the presence of one or more medical students, watching in an uninvolved fashion, and possibly changing from visit to visit. If the students are seated to one side or even behind him, the patient may feel increasingly uncomfortable about exposing personal material in the absence of any visual feedback. A passive audience may be permissible in a general medical setting where information is less personal and amateur status is masked behind white uniforms. In psychiatry, however, the youthfulness and comparative immaturity of students may be heightened by casual dress and less formal clinics.