Editorial

Soon afterwards he took the specialist physician examinations (which only the brightest tend to do) and went on to train in psychiatry at the country’s foremost academic centre – the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley Hospital in London; before leaving there, he also took a higher degree, an MSc in research methodology. A therapeutic community is a fairly radical, democratic and progressive form of mental health treatment that relies on group therapy ideas, and living together in a way such that everything that happens becomes part of the therapy. [...]we started recruiting and building the team – I think we shortlisted about 40 people for 24 jobs across Berks, Bucks and Oxon – and had a whole day in Friends Meeting House in St Giles – making them listen to our plans, have lunch together, play games – and have formal interviews in the midst of it all. There I think about 14 of us embarked on a boat run by a couple of Italian psychiatrists – they had it as a training base for psychodrama therapy, but never had it seen a crew like us from UK.