Just ghosted an opinion piece for CIHM which has gone up on Guardian professional. Do we really want patients to think of themselves purely as customers, with the potential for footstamping and tantrums that entails? It may have some short-term benefits but ultimately it encourages mindless individualism, the last thing the NHS needs. What is needed is true patient engagement and consumerist discourse works against that. Check the full argument out - by CIHM's brilliant Becky Malby and Irwin Turbitt - here.
I'm interviewing academics at the University of East London for a research brochure. The other day I met someone called Barbara Taylor. "So what's the real world impact of your book going to be?" I asked chirpily. "Well, it's going to be published by Penguin," she replies. "It's about mental health, a mixture of historical study and memoir as I've spent three years researching the asylum system, and I was in Friern Barnet hospital in the 1980s. Books like that tend to attract a lot of attention." She's only The Barbara Taylor - world famous historian of feminism! Actually I've never heard of her, but one has a way of noticing when one is the presence of brilliance and a quick google afterwards confirmed I had been. The book is about how we look after each other - everyone needs looking after, mental health is just one example of that. She says that question is nothing new, it's always been a preoccupation of feminism. But th...
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