A time honoured way of oversimplifying complex problems

doi:10.1136/bmj.39262.458773.3A

BMJ 2007;335:8 (7 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.39262.458773.3A

Letters

Before and after pictures

A time honoured way of oversimplifying complex problems

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

With its foreboding talk of an impending epidemic that willoverwhelm services and its eye grabbing before and after photosof a woman after two and a half years of taking crystal meth,Coombes's article reminded us of an article published 80 yearsearlier, warning of yet another contemporary psychiatric epidemic.¹² As in the BMJ article, a first photo shows a relaxed and dignifiedman before the "habits of the secret vice began to show," whilethe second photo shows the same man, now haggard and furtive,"three years later, when he had become an inveterate victimof the vice." What was this vice that threatened to overwhelmthe asylums of the day? "Self-pollution, the unnatural and degradingvice of producing venereal excitement by the hand."

A recent nationwide electronic survey of psychiatrists by thenational director for mental health found no evidence of anincreased prevalence of psychiatric disorder . . . [Full text of this article]

Dave W H Baillie, specialist registrar in adult psychiatry, Mark Salter, consultant psychiatrist

London and the City Mental Health Trust, London E1 6LP

Dave.Baillie@elcmht.nhs.uk