A naturalistic study was conducted to examine the outcome on self-report and observer-rated measures in patients with severe, chronic, resistant obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) admitted to a specialised in-patient unit.

Twenty-six patients were admitted over the study period. The mean age of all patients was 37 years (s.d.=13.8, range 18–61 years) and they had a mean duration of OCD of 18.4 years (s.d.=10.9, range 4–40 years). Instruments measuring severity demonstrated a 37–67% reduction in obsessive–compulsive symptoms and a 64% reduction in depressive symptoms after an average of almost 15 weeks in hospital.

This study demonstrates that specialised in-patient care can benefit a small group of severely ill patients with OCD who fail to respond to treatment in primary and secondary care.

The Human Rights Act was incorporated into UK law in 2000, but little is known about how it is implemented in psychiatric care. We explored the understanding of multidisciplinary teams of the restriction and protection of patients' human rights using an open-response questionnaire. Content analysis was employed to summarise written, narrative data about the human rights of 102 patients in secure psychiatric care.

Our clinical teams considered human rights to be protected through risk assessment and management, ongoing monitoring, local policy and existing UK mental health legislation. Understanding of the proper and proportionate restriction of ‘qualified’ rights (such as article 5 liberty) and the positive enablement and promotion of human rights (such as article 8 family and private life) appeared to be limited.

A cultural shift in focus is required in mental health services to understand and ensure positive promotion of human rights. Clinicians should directly address the human rights of their patients and articulate the rationale for proportionate restrictions of qualified rights. Clinical policy, training and audit should explicitly embody the protection of human rights.

Involvement of service users in the research process and examination of recovery from psychosis are two topics that have generated recent interest within the research community. This user-led study examines the subjective experience of recovery in people with experience of psychosis. Seven interviews were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis and several themes emerged from the data.

Recovery from psychosis was found to be a complex and idiosyncratic process, which often involved rebuilding life, rebuilding self and hope for a better future (each of these themes consisted of sub-themes).

The importance of continuity of care, the need for greater choice in approaches aimed at alleviating distress, access to stories of recovery and encouragement, and the importance of more individualised recovery care plans are among factors highlighted.

The aim of this study was to investigate the pattern of performance of candidates in the MRCPsych examinations in the period 1997–2002 inclusive. During this period 6306 candidates sat the MRCPsych part I and 4536 sat the MRCPsych part II.

The overall pass rates for MRCPsych part I was 44.7% and 48.9% for MRCPsych part II. The majority of those who passed either part of the examinations did so on their first attempt; females performed better than males and graduates of UK and Republic of Ireland medical schools performed better than foreign graduates in all component parts of the examinations.

The pattern of results suggests that clinical tutors and course organisers need to pay special care to the training needs of trainees who are foreign medical graduates.