It pays to be specific

When working as a general practitioner on a housing estate in south east London in the 1960s I went to a lecture on psychiatry. It was mainly about how depression presents in many different ways, mimicking other conditions. Often a patient arrives at the psychiatric clinic having been through a battery of investigations, the psychiatrist being used as a last resort.

My receptionist remarked one day that her next door neighbours, an elderly couple, were to get a flat on the estate. I was warned that their previous …