Degrees of ignorance
Opinions about nurse training are like haemorrhoids. Sooner or later every arsehole develops one. With the news that all nurses in England will train to degree level from 2013, we’ve had a whole slew of opinions across the media about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Some of these opinions have been informed and well-reasoned. As for the other 99%…..oh dear. As a degree-educated nurse myself, I’m in favour of the move. That said, I can recognise that it’s entirely possible to construct a valid, knowledgeable argument against making nursing a graduate profession. Sadly, none of the following are making valid, knowledgeab

Empty of Inspiration
Really I have no idea what I am about to write. I was intending to do a whole what is mental illness type post, then thought frankly life is too short. So I am going to discuss a couple of things I came across recently and try to link them together for no good reason. The first is this little snippet, from Canadamerica. Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave is fighting to have her benefits reinstated after her employer’s insurance company cut them, she says, because of photos posted

This Week in Mentalists (107)
This week’s Wildcard strikes a blow for the rights of straight, white men everywhere to watch Top Gear and talk about the Kaiser Chiefs. Meanwhile, the mental health bloggers discuss labelling, waiting lists, antisocial personality disorder and more. Fighting Monsters discusses people in hospital with dementia. Today, Community Care reports that the Alzheimer�

Kate Moss in “not a good role model” shock horror
It would be fair to say that Kate Moss isn’t a positive role model for how to live a mentally and physically healthy lifetstyle. Much as one wouldn’t consider Gordon Brown a good role model on how to have a raunchy sex life. She’s currently getting heavy criticism from the media for saying “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” (a common pro-ana slogan) in an interview. And yeah, the criticism is justified. Even so, aren’t certain elements of the media being just a tad hypocritical here? Could it be that some of those same newspapers that are condemning her bear just a little bit of responsibility of their own?

1990s Identity Politics Revisited – Mentalist Style
Back in the 90s, we all learned that the language that we used to refer to people could have a lot of influence. An immense amount of brain power, struggle and argument went into defining the appropriate terminology to refer to people of various ethnicities and minority groups. While I actually think this was a useful and worthwhile exercise, it’s not what I want to discuss here. Instead, I want to look at the terminology that is used to refer to us mentalists. There is a parallel process underway at the moment in our society to come up with the proper terminology to use when talking about those of us who see psychiatrists regularly.  I don’t like the way i