Forging successful partnerships in psychosis research: lessons from the Cavan–Monaghan First Episode Psychosis Study

Embedding psychosis research within community mental services is highly desirable from several perspectives but can be difficult to establish and sustain, especially when the clinical service has a rural location at a distance from academic settings with established research expertise. In this article, we share the experience of a successful partnership in psychosis research between a rural Irish mental health service and the academic department of a Dublin medical school that has lasted over 30 years. We describe the origins and evolution of this relationship, the benefits that accrued and the challenges encountered, from the overlapping perspectives of the academic department, the mental health service and psychiatric training. We discuss the potential learning that arose from the initiative, particularly for national programme planning for early intervention in psychosis, and we explore the opportunities for enhanced training, career development and professional reward that can emerge from this type of partnership.

‘Syphilis is given over to sentimentalists’: the Dublin Medical Press and Circular and the drive to extend the Contagious Diseases Acts

In 1878, a meeting organised in Dublin by those in favour of repealing the contentious Contagious Diseases Acts ended in chaos and disruption. The acts themselves empowered police and doctors to forcibly detain and examine women (within specified geographical locations) suspected of being infected with venereal disease. The campaign to abolish the acts appeared to lack the widespread support that it had gathered in England, particularly in medical circles, and the disorderliness of the Dublin meeting seemed to confirm this. The Irish medical press, specifically the weekly Dublin Medical Press and Circular (D.M.P.C.) mirrored The Lancet’s vilification of those who sought to abolish the acts. This article examines the D.M.P.C.’s campaign to extend the acts in Ireland and explores its influence within the context of the debate surrounding these controversial acts. Despite prolific representation of leading English medics among those who opposed the acts, the D.M.P.C. did not offer any outspoken testimony for the repeal of the C.D.A.s by an important figure in the Irish medical profession. This article examines the reasons for such a muted response by Irish doctors to the draconian legislation that directly involved the profession.

THE BURIAL CLUBS: OR HOW TO TURN SICK CHILDREN TO ACCOUNT

The pernicious practice of killing infants to collect the insurance on their lives is vividly described in an editorial in The Dublin Medical Press of December 4, 1844.1 The editorials published in this Journal were especially noted for their fervor to correct evil medical practices and also for their biting political satire, usually directed against England. The juxtaposition of the former and latter will be apparent in the editorial excerpts below: In the last [London] Medical Gazette, we have again attention drawn to the horrible, the atrocious practice of destroying children for the purpose of obtaining money insured on their lives, or rather on their deaths. Our readers will scarcely believe us when we say it, but it seems there can be now no more doubt on the subject than there is that people were strangled by BURKE and HARE for the sake of their bodies to be sold for dissection. The plan is, to subscribe in the child's name to what is called a "burial club," a kind of "little go" insurance office, where for a penny a week a sum varying from £2 to £10is allowed on the child's death, and the same child may be entered into many clubs; so that the insurer or parent may receive as much as £5, £10, or £15 on the death of the insured infant, while the expense of interment is only about £3.A sum, as the writer says, "larger than the insurer in most cases ever previously possessd . . .

Thomas Godfrey Mason, 1890-1959

Thomas Godfrey Mason was something of a recluse who talked little of his private affairs and of his childhood and education. These circumstances make it difficult to present as full an account of his life as one would wish. Thomas Godfrey Mason was born at Greystones, Co. Dublin on 24 July 1890 ; his father, C. W. Townshend, married Miss A. R. Mason a member of a Dublin medical family. Three of his wife’s brothers were medical men in Dublin. Thomas Godfrey and his brother and two sisters were largely brought up in Dublin by their mother and by her father. Ultimately they took the latter’s name, Mason. Thomas attended a preparatory school, Temple Grove at Richmond, Surrey, and later went to Cheltenham College. Few records can be obtained of his early interests and activities, apart from a known prowess as a long distance runner and an enthusiasm for motor bicycling during the infancy of that form of transport.