Search results

The purpose of this paper to contribute to discussions on improvements to acute mental health services by increasing the awareness of the experience of being compulsorily detained.

A thematic analysis of a literature review was undertaken, exploring patients’ experiences of compulsory detention, and is presented here alongside a lived-experience commentary. This leads into a discussion of the implications for practice.

There are three key themes identified: people’s views on the justification of their compulsory detention; the power imbalance between patients and staff; and the lack of information or choice. The lived-experience commentary adds weight to these findings by citing personal examples and making suggestions for improving services. The discussion centres on the potential of co-production between people who access services, their supporters, and professionals to improve treatment for people who may need compulsory detention. The paper also raises questions on whether current legislation and service provision can effectively deliver recovery-orientated practice.

Through bringing together research evidence and personal perspectives this paper contributes to the discussion on how services for people in crisis can be improved and raises important questions about current service provision and the legislation that underpins it.

1966 may not prove to be one of the vintage years in the field of food quality control, but it holds the promise of some particularly important developments; for new and improved compositional standards for a number of processed and pre‐cooked foods and a stricter regulation of the description of almost all foods. New Labelling of Food Regulations, more extensive than anything that has gone before, may have been finally made before the end of the year. (The last day for representations in the several divisions of the proposed Regulations was actually this January 13). The Food Standards Committee's recommendations were comprehensive but necessary and it is hoped that the regulations will show no serious whittling away of these recommendations.

Designed to serve short to medium ranges (up to 3,300 nm), the Airbus Industrie A310 achieves optimum performance on routes requiring a capacity of 200–265 passengers. It is notable that some 80% of airlines' short to medium range network consists of operations over sectors up to 1,500 nm and over these distances the A310 will have 22% lower fuel consumption per seat than competing wide bodies and 7% lower than semi‐wide bodied aircraft. The A310 is a logical extension of the company's products that will fill the gap between the large narrow‐bodied types such as the Boeing 757, and the A300. Formally launched in July, 1978, design and development work on the new aircraft has now been completed and it will commence ground testing before the end of this year. First flight of the A310 is scheduled for March, 1982, and initial entry into service with Swissair and Lufthansa will be in March, 1983.

Over the years we have reported prosecutions where the defence has alleged, and with circumstantial support that the presence of a harmful foreign body in food was deliberate through the action of a single disgruntled employee or where the labour relations climate generally has been bad. It makes no difference to the manufacturer's responsibility—the offence is an absolute one—but occasionally courts have allowed it in mitigation. Sometimes, it has been the nature of the extraneous material, e.g. fragments of glass or metal, the like of which did not exist in the factory premises or plant. This may be taken as a symptom of the vandalism of the age, but more recently, two incidents have drawn attention to its dangers and provided a glimpse of the criminal mind which can inflict such injury on employers, and expose innocent consumers, of all ages, to possible harm.

MANY significant characteristics of the development of aero engine design together with likely trends for the future were addressed at a recent Seminar sponsored by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Royal Aeronautical Society. Environmental effects play an important part together with advanced technology features and the requirement that an operator would always like to see high reliability and trouble‐free maintainability.

Papers read at the symposium on damage tolerance in aircraft structures, in Toronto in 1970 are here collected between hard covers. Altogether they review the state of aircraft structural analysis for structures with propagating cracks and present recent advancements in research into basic mechanisms of crack propagation and residual strength of aircraft structures. The papers also provide a review of fracture mechanics as applied to the assessment of structural vulnerability and residual strength of materials and structures. To achieve this, the papers fall into the categories of basic concepts in fatigue crack propagation, effects of panel geometry, influence of panel stiffeners and application of fracture mechanics and crack propagation to the design and test of aircraft structures.

It is now forty years since there appeared H. R. Plomer's first volume Dictionary of the booksellers and printers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667. This has been followed by additional Bibliographical Society publications covering similarly the years up to 1775. From the short sketches given in this series, indicating changes of imprint and type of work undertaken, scholars working with English books issued before the closing years of the eighteenth century have had great assistance in dating the undated and in determining the colour and calibre of any work before it is consulted.

At the Royal Society of Health annual conference, no less a person than the editor of the B.M.A.'s “Family Doctor” publications, speaking of the failure of the anti‐smoking campaign, said we “had to accept that health education did not work”; viewing the difficulties in food hygiene, there are many enthusiasts in public health who must be thinking the same thing. Dr Trevor Weston said people read and believed what the health educationists propounded, but this did not make them change their behaviour. In the early days of its conception, too much was undoubtedly expected from health education. It was one of those plans and schemes, part of the bright, new world which emerged in the heady period which followed the carnage of the Great War; perhaps one form of expressing relief that at long last it was all over. It was a time for rebuilding—housing, nutritional and living standards; as the politicians of the day were saying, you cannot build democracy—hadn't the world just been made “safe for democracy?”—on an empty belly and life in a hovel. People knew little or nothing about health or how to safeguard it; health education seemed right and proper at this time. There were few such conceptions in France which had suffered appalling losses; the poilu who had survived wanted only to return to his fields and womenfolk, satisfied that Marianne would take revenge and exact massive retribution from the Boche!

The lengthy review of the Food Standards Committee of this, agreed by all public analysts and enforcement officers, as the most complicated and difficult of food groups subject to detailed legislative control, is at last complete and the Committee's findings set out in their Report. When in 1975 they were requested to investigate the workings of the legislation, the problems of control were already apparent and getting worse. The triology of Regulations of 1967 seemed comprehensive at the time, perhaps as we ventured to suggest a little too comprehensive for a rational system of control for arguments on meat contents of different products, descriptions and interpretation generally quickly appeared. The system, for all its detail, provided too many loopholes through which manufacturers drove the proverbial “carriage and pair”. As meat products have increased in range and the constantly rising price of meat, the “major ingredient”, the number of samples taken for analysis has risen and now usually constitutes about one‐quarter of the total for the year, with sausages, prepared meats (pies, pasties), and most recently, minced meat predominating. Just as serial sampling and analysis of sausages before the 1967 Regulations were pleaded in courts to establish usage in the matter of meat content, so with minced meat the same methods are being used to establish a maximum fat content usage. What concerns food law enforcement agencies is that despite the years that the standards imposed by the 1967 Regulations have been in force, the number of infringements show no sign of reduction. This should not really surprise us; there are even longer periods of failures to comply; eg., in the use of preservatives which have been controlled since 1925! What a number of public analysts have christened the “beefburger saga” took its rise post‐1967 and shows every indication of continuing into the distant future. Manufacturers appear to be trying numerous ploys to reduce the content below the Regulation 80% mainly by giving their products new names. Each year, public analysts report a flux of new names and ingenious defences; eg, “caterburgers” and similar concocted nomenclature, and the defence that because the name does not incorporate a meat, it is outside the statutory standard.

The division between town and country in most areas of the world is marked and shows little evidence of any closer association, but in this country recent history with its wide economic changes has made the division less deep than in times past, but still within living memory. Time was when country folk were almost a distinct breed, living under conditions for the most part primitive.