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Letters
We welcome all readers' letters, but reserve the right to edit them or withhold names and addresses. Please keep letters to a maximum of 150 words, and include your full name, address and a daytime telephone number.
Write to: The Editor, Mental Health Practice, The Heights, 59-65 Lowlands Road, Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middlesex, HA1 3AW. You can also email letters to: helen.hyland@rcnpublishing.co.uk
After sober reflection
Punitive taxation, public education and the recent ban on smoking in indoor public places have reduced the proportion of the UK population who smoke from about 55 per cent in 1970 to about 25 per cent today (Cancer Research UK 2011). Smoking has almost disappeared from television and cinema screens too, but the drinking of alcohol is often seen, and sometimes made to appear glamorous, in these media.
Force feeding as treatment
In the mid-1980s, I was treated for anorexia. I was allowed no dignity or respect, and was held down while being force fed. The most damaging part was the punishment I received and the cruel way I was treated.
Harm minimisation
Service survivors, and our allies, have for many years drawn on the literature, research and practice to advocate a harm-minimisation approach to self-injury.
Time for action
Whenever an article on training pathways, degree-level courses, or excellence in recording the use of restraint appears in Mental Health Practice, my heart sinks.
The RCN Publishing Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Royal College of Nursing, the world's largest organisation for nurses. RCN Publishing produces one weekly, eight monthly and two quarterly nursing publications. Nursing Standard, the flagship journal, is the UK's biggest selling weekly for nursing. It is produced by RCN Publishing Company along with a suite of specialist nursing journals - Cancer Nursing Practice, Mental Health Practice, Learning Disability Practice, Nursing Children and Young People, Nursing Management, Emergency Nurse, Nursing Older People, Nurse Researcher and Primary Health Care. RCN Publishing Company also produce the RCN Bulletin, a major source of up-to-the-minute information for RCN members in all specialities, grades and working environments. With the latest nurse vacancies from trusts nationwide, it has become the most cost-effective nurse recruitment magazine available.