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Commentary

Gresham Professor and Consultant Psychiatrist, Maudsley Hospital, Westways Clinic, 49 St James Road, Croydon CR9 2RR, UK; r.persaud@iop.kcl.ac.uk

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

The view of the cognitive behavioural therapist (the new dominant paradigm in psychiatry) is that it’s not what happens to you in life which leads to stress or upset—more it’s how you interpret what’s happened to you. Psychotherapists frequently employ a technique called "reframing" whereby a negative life event can be reconstrued so as to render it less threatening and upsetting. Some self help gurus from an American persuasion even take this approach to an extreme with the catch phrase "how can I make this problem more perfect"—in other words crisis often represents an opportunity—if you know how to get past the emotional turmoil, recover your composure, and seize the advantages which might conceivably lie among the wreckage.

These sentiments may seem inappropriate when we think of the tragedy of Harold Shipman, but the huge losses may have been easier to bear if the correct lessons could have been learnt . . . [Full text of this article]

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