Rehumanise yourself

“You can never go back,” I was always being told by colleagues who had regretted not gathering more training experience before taking up their consultant posts. This was therefore my motto as I attempted to accumulate diverse training experiences.

I had been working on a research oriented forensic unit treating people with personality disorder, a new venture in uncertain times for these services in Britain. Most patients were offenders with severe problems, and I spent my time categorising and classifying their problems, formulating any possible link between their offending and their disorders, and thus directing the treatment approaches and interventions. Assessment had become my forte, and I breathed diagnostic systems and psychological …