Introduction

Extract

This issue of International Psychogeriatrics sees the introduction of what I hope will become a regular journal feature: a “for debate” section. Several other journals have a policy of airing two opposing points of view on controversial topics, sometimes followed by a commentary. Although there are some things upon which all (or nearly all!) health professionals working in the field of psychogeriatrics can agree, it is also true that there are a number of issues on which available evidence is too thin, the balance of benefit and cost (or even harm) too delicately poised, or ethical viewpoints too diverse, to allow consensus to emerge. It also seems likely that some of the things that we do as routine or believe as gospel today, may one day turn out to be viewed quite differently (e.g. insulin coma therapy), so I think it is healthy that we should identify such areas of disagreement and rehearse in print the cases for and against certain practices or points of view. The aim is not to make everybody agree, nor solely to entertain our readership with the spectacle of two irreconcilable sides of an argument slogging away at each other until both succumb to a technical knockout (rather like the TV program, Monty Python's Flying Circus, which proposed a show called A Brick Wall in which two people of utterly opposed views would throw bricks at one another in front of a studio audience!), but rather, by outlining what is known and how it can be viewed, to assist us all in better understanding some of the difficult issues faced by our discipline, and to further comprehension and respect of divergent points of view.