We are mad, not only individuals but nations also. We restrain manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the so-called glory of killing whole peoples?

The Education Act (1981) was brought into effect on 1 September 1983. Explanatory and guidance documents were published in 1983. The Education Act has effects on the work of child and adolescent psychiatrists in two ways. Firstly it affects those in-patient and day units that have education on the premises. Secondly it affects the placement of children who have special educational needs because of emotional or behavioural problems, the children who in the past would have been deemed maladjusted. While child psychiatrists should be involved in all cases where emotional and behavioural problems are the main issue, they will also be involved with some of the children who have special educational needs because of intellectual and learning difficulties, children who in the past were deemed educationally subnormal. These children between them constitute a high proportion of those who will, under the new Act, be subjects of statements of need.

Even before Erving Goffman's Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity was published in 1963, it had been a commonplace notion that there was a stigma attached to psychiatric illness. King Lear's cry ‘Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven’ echoes down the ages. But in the years since Goffman's book there has been a concerted attempt by psychiatrists, by patients' groups, by the media, to ‘destigmatise’ and ‘demythologise’ psychiatry. This has taken many subtle forms, but several major themes were apparent.

The annual Trainees Day in the North West Division was held on 6 March 1985, at Winwick Hospital, Warrington, Cheshire. The meeting was attended by more than 60 trainees and psychiatric tutors from the Division.