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Medical kitsch

Correspondence to:
Dr J Launer, London Department of Postgraduate Dental and Medical Education, Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DN, UK; jlauner@londondeanery.ac.uk

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

Turning on the car radio recently, I found myself listening to a well-known London psychiatrist. An interviewer was asking his opinion about a scheme to offer cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) to very large numbers of people who have been out of work for a long time because of depression. The scheme has had a lot of publicity in the UK. It been promoted in particular by Lord Richard Layard, an economist with an interest in mental health, and it has won great favour recently with the British government.¹ The aim is to train several thousand mental health workers in a short space of time to deliver the therapy in centres throughout the country. Supporters of the scheme argue that this will reduce unemployment and hence the volume of claims for incapacity benefit. However, the psychiatrist on the radio—Dr Derek Summerfield from the Maudsley Hospital—was dismissive. He summed up the proposal in . . . [Full text of this article]