A forum theatre-based intervention was delivered to medical students undertaking their psychiatry rotation. A professionally written and acted play titled Revolving Door was adapted for undergraduate education to illuminate the lived experience of a young man with psychosis and his family. A mixed-methods evaluation, comprising a post-intervention survey and focus group, was undertaken to assess to what extent forum theatre can support medical student learning and to identify the aspects that contribute to its pedagogical value. Quantitative and qualitative data revealed that forum theatre is an effective pedagogical method that helps medical students to improve their intellectual understanding of a condition or clinical skill and gain insight into the lived experience of patients, empowering them to make meaningful change as future clinicians. The study highlights an innovative intervention that champions transformative learning, an aspect that is often overlooked in traditional medical education.

Parental hospitalisation harms parent-child relationships and child outcomes. Thus, supporting parent-child connection is enshrined in the Mental Health Act (1983). However, there is no recent evaluation of provision or understanding of the prevalence of parents in in-patient settings.We sent a cross-sectional Freedom of Information request to all 50 English National Health Service (NHS) trusts that provide in-patient psychiatric services, aiming to capture the following: parental admissions; information on parental status; parenting-related policies/procedures/materials; and frequency of children's visits. Only 5 trusts could report the prevalence of parenthood (M = 13.9% of patients); 11 could report the information they collect on parental status; 28 provided policies; 18 provided materials for parents, carers or children; and 1 held data on child visits. Most English NHS trusts do not hold basic information about parents in in-patient psychiatric settings. This suggests widespread failure to meet the requirements of the Mental Health Act, and probably failure to support families and ensure the safeguarding of children.

Aims and method Community forensic mental health services (CFMHS) in England were developed to reduce reliance on hospital care for this population, but provision varies. It is unclear whether standard setting work has increased consistency. Freedom of information requests were therefore sent to 50 National Health Service Trusts in England, to examine the population, staffing, treatment provision and organisation of CFMHS. Results Data were provided for 32 CFMHS, of which 59% were part of secure hospital-based services and 41% were standalone services working in parallel with general services. There was variation in aspects including professional composition, functions, the settings from where CFMHS accept referrals and long-term approach to patients subject to special restrictions under the Mental Health Act 1983. Clinical implications CFMHS continue to vary, especially in their interface with services other than forensic hospitals. This may impede standard setting and empirical evaluation. Different approaches to centralising oversight may be needed for standardisation.

We always treat fluent language as a marker of intelligence and trustworthiness, often independent of factual accuracy. Large language models (LLMs) exploit this bias by producing confident, human-like texts that are perceived as intelligent and trustworthy, even when they lack accurate contextual understanding or are factually incorrect. This creates particular risks in mental healthcare, where communication, trust and context are central, and where errors are difficult to detect but highly consequential. This article examines how linguistic fluency shapes judgement, how LLMs amplify these effects and why their use in mental healthcare poses ethical and clinical dangers. It argues for strict limits on deployment, restricting LLMs to supervised, assistive tasks rather than clinical judgement.

This article explores how clinical language used to describe long-standing and severe eating disorders shapes treatment experiences and outcomes. Drawing on critical discourse theory and the authors' lived experiences, the paper analyses the impacts of language through intrapersonal, interpersonal and systemic lenses. The analysis highlights how the language used to describeillness can foster therapeutic nihilism, internalised hopelessness and disengagement from treatment for both clinicians and patients, reducing the impetus for developing or accessing better care. These labels may obscure systemic shortcomings in treatment provisionand can become self-fulfilling, undermining clinician motivation and patient recovery. The authors propose a paradigm shift toward recovery-oriented, co-created language that centres epistemic justice. Clinical discourse should promote therapeutic optimism and support inclusive, patient-centred care. Recovery-focused language can strengthen engagement, improve outcomes and support a treatment culture grounded in mutual respect and hope.

The findings indicate a higher than expected prevalence of neurodivergent conditions in people with FND. Enhanced early identification and tailored treatment approaches are likely to be crucial for improving clinical outcomes and patient experiences in neuropsychiatric settings.

Between the 1970s and 1990s, Brian Barraclough's research on clinical and social aspects of suicide contributed enormously to our understanding of the subject.