MEDICAL ESSENTIALS FROM ENGLAND
Hugh Middleton, MD, MRCP, FRCPsych, is Associate Professor at the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham and NHS Consultant Psychiatrist, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust. Following education and training in Cambridge, Oxford and London, he has practised medicine since 1974 and was appointed to his present post in 1994. His book Psychiatry Reconsidered: From Medical Treatment to Supportive Understanding was published in June of 2015.
He writes: “Years in practice have taught me to respect what we don’t know better than the false uncertainties of those who think they do. This is particularly true in psychiatry where so many of our ‘treatments’ are only partially effective, and yet we wield immense power. Quite often people change in a helpful way, not because they have received an evidence-based treatment, but because they have been enabled in personal growth and development. I am interested in how this can be applied to how we provide ‘mental health services,’ and in what this can teach us more broadly about what it means to be human.”
