Robert Howard retweeted
The UK Govt has been given suggestions on how NOT to just stand by… with several ways to ensure suffering in Gaza is eased. @Caabu urged @Ed_Miliband and the UK Govt to ensure that ‘Israel permits free and proper humanitarian access into Gaza. This includes using powers to sanction those who block life-saving humanitarian aid’.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza is getting worse. Heavy rain. Flooded tents. The reality on the ground is heartbreaking.
The UK government will not stand by. We will not rest until we bring an end to the intolerable suffering.
46
227
579
24,098
Robert Howard retweeted
By @SchmahmannLab:
Phenoconsonance: A New Form of Neurological Analysis That Complements Anatomical Localization and Disease Pattern Recognition | The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/ap…
Phenoconsonance: A New Form of Neurological Analysis That Complements Anatomical Localization and Disease Pattern Recognition | The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/ap…
0
8
25
1,084
Robert Howard retweeted
“Crude, naive, psychologising” is what we see when trauma therapists try to insist that trauma is the cause of all mental illness.
| The limits of Psychopathology |
The Psychopathologist interests lie in the explication and discovery of significant concepts that bridge the divide between observation and subjective experience.
4
6
36
1,366
Robert Howard retweeted
Those were a very powerful set of sentencing remarks, that stand as a counter to Russell Brand's grimly misogynistic defence strategy
56
106
1,279
91,143
Robert Howard retweeted
We’re on track for two degrees before 2040. theguardian.com/environment/20…
24
49
79
4,747
Robert Howard retweeted
‘To hell with a world that talks endlessly about human rights while leaving children to drown inside their tents. To hell with everyone who has witnessed this suffering and chosen silence…’
#RemembranceDay
#RemembranceDay
I admit that I completely broke down today. I cried uncontrollably. I couldn’t hold myself together after witnessing what I saw with my own eyes.
Today, we went to film a journalistic report inside the displacement tents along the seashore. I swear, what we witnessed was beyond what any human being should have to endure.
I saw men crying bitterly. Men I had never seen cry when they lost their children or when their homes were destroyed. Today, I saw them crying because they were powerless to do the simplest thing: protect their children from the water and the cold.
We spoke to families who told us they had spent the entire night carrying their children in their arms after floodwater covered the floors of their tents and soaked their mattresses. They couldn’t find a single dry place to put their children. They couldn’t even give them a few hours of sleep.
I saw children no older than five, without proper clothes to protect them from the cold, without heating, and without a dry place to sleep. Children shivering inside tents that cannot keep out the rain, protect them from the wind, or provide even the most basic sense of safety.
What more must happen for this world to act? How much more suffering must people endure before someone remembers that they are human beings?
I am sick of this world. I am sick of its hypocrisy and empty slogans. To hell with a world that talks endlessly about human rights while leaving children to drown inside their tents. To hell with everyone who has witnessed this suffering and chosen silence, and to hell with the governments and institutions that have the power to act but continue to turn their backs on us.
110
508
1,305
13,560
Robert Howard retweeted
“I don’t evangelise for ECT, but one of the things that surprise people is that I wish I’d gotten it sooner”
theguardian.com/society/2026/n…
theguardian.com/society/2026/n…
0
3
9
551
Makes perfect sense for the patients that neuropsychiatrists see. But that’s probably about it!
November issue of Brain Journal now out with an Editorial by @belin_david and myself on The return of neuropsychiatry: why clinical neuroscience needs neurology and psychiatry reunited
academic.oup.com/brain/article/…
4
2
16
3,050
Not controversial at all. Exactly what has happened within mental health services. Financial cuts from Austerity, shortages of trained and competent multidisciplinary colleagues and (it has to be said) often appalling leadership at individual Trust level have all contributed.
I may say something controversial.
You can't run mental health services that are overstretched and overwhelmed for years, where clinicians are forced to prioritise high risk, raise the bar for entry and cut anything seen as a "luxury", and then expect junior doctors to develop a high standard of knowledge and skill.
What they learn instead is how to manage risk and reject referrals.
In a system like this, a lot is treated as a “luxury”:
• the therapeutic value of the relationship itself, and of contact with a team (before, it was the status quo. Now patients are not kept open without a clear “intervention”, while the relationship itself can be the intervention)
• psychotherapy skills integrated in practice
• a psychiatrist seeing a patient when there is no medication need
One of the most frustrating phrases I heard in my NHS consultant years was: "I'm not going to prescribe for this patient, so there's no point in seeing them."
At first I thought this came from more biologically oriented colleagues. But when resources are this limited, even caring, formulation-focused psychiatrists end up working the same way.
Trainees learn that this is normal. Few people have time to add: "It shouldn't be like this. It's because of a lack of resources."
So, as generations change, expertise narrows to risk and caseload management.
The RCPsych is clearly aware of this, and the push to bring formulation into training is a good step against the current. My worry is that it becomes another tick-box: something to evidence during training, before trainees go back to copying what they see consultants do on a daily basis.
Psychotherapy training is often treated the same way: do your two cases, attend Balint, get signed off, move on.
For five years I taught psychiatrists in the West Midlands how to integrate psychotherapy and lifestyle skills into everyday practice. The idea is that these skills are not a box to tick, but tools to use in every clinical encounter. Not something to have signed off and forget about. But courses won't change much.
What's needed is less pressure on the system, so that the people who care still have the space to pass on what good care looks like.
P.S. This isn't about any specific trust. It's about a trend across mental health services.
2
19
104
5,281
Last outing of the year for our old jalopies before they are tucked up for their winter slumber.
6
0
53
1,433
At this time of the year, the evening skies in north Norfolk are full of skeins of raucous pink footed geese, heading to their roost.
6
5
82
1,801
RT @dawso007: @KenV54 @nytimes @DrAnnieHickox @ProfRobHoward @sanilrege @tylerblack32 @jonathanstea This is my story - I went from a neuro…
0
1
0
21
Good to see the ODDESSI trial team acknowledging that number of admissions cannot be considered a prespecified trial outcome from which efficacy claims for OD can be made.
thelancet.com/journals/lanps…
thelancet.com/journals/lanps…
1
2
10
1,529
This is an interesting and carefully referenced dissection of the ways in which one “critical” psychiatrist persistently misrepresented the implications of *that* serotonin review.
jocgoulder.substack.com/p/my-reply-to-…
jocgoulder.substack.com/p/my-reply-to-…
3
7
27
2,822
