I visited my local secondhand bookshop yesterday… A treat on a Saturday morning. I came across a 1948 publication “The therapy of the neuroses and psychoses” Samuel Henry Kraines MD. 642 pages of history!

I couldn’t help but purchase this book, having just submitted my PhD about young rural people and their experiences of emerging mental health problems… of which psychosis is but one… I have just come up with a stack of new ideas and knowledge about the topic and I thought it might even be interesting to glimpse back into the past to see how far (or not) we have come.

Hope it seems is a timeless central element of recovery for helping people with mental health problems… important then and now – a pleasing finding!!!

No doubt it will be a eye opener to peruse this book – page three has me intrigued already!

“Polysyllabic diagnoses and mysterious terminology temporarily intrigue many persons but of course offer no cures. … probably the most important element in therapy …is the sustaining, driving, curative therapy of hope which the sympathetic and understanding physician (I say nurse!) can give.” (Page 3).

Some things are timeless! Here’s to more hope !
And… Who doesn’t love big long unpronounceable words to describe our ills! Surely the longer the word the better the sympathy !