Abstract
It is often said that you can't hold back progress. For those who work with troubled teenagers, much therapeutic time is taken up helping them cope with the daunting developmental challenges of adolescence. A 14-year-old boy with anorexia nervosa told me recently that life felt like an escalator that was taking him inexorably upwards and onwards. ‘On an escalator, you can't usually see what's beyond the top, as it's out of sight,’ he told me, adding: ‘At least on an escalator there's a big red button you can press in an emergency and stop it – and then someone will come and help you.’ Not though in life, and evidently not in the NHS!
Publisher
Royal College of Psychiatrists
Subject
Psychiatry and Mental health
Reference5 articles.
1. Who wants to be a general psychiatrist?
2. Adolescent units: a need for change?
3. O'Herlihy A. , Worrall A. , Lelliott P. , et al (accepted) Distribution and characteristics of in-patient child and adolescent mental health services in England and Wales. British Journal of Psychiatry.
4. Beecham J. , Chisholm D. , Oherlihy A. , et al (accepted) Child and adolescent psychiatric in-patient units: why do costs vary? British Journal of Psychiatry.