An interesting feature on R. D. Laing’s children; he was the guru psychiatrist in the ‘60s who was criticised for blaming the parents for metal illness, but achieved a lot more interest from the educated public in the causes of mental ill-health and family relationship problems than thousands of other more conventional health and social care practitioners. He particularly rejected his first family, but later children seemed to have valued him more. Is it possible to lead a controversial public life and a satisfactory private life? The problems of family estrangements are experienced by many palliative care services as people try to sort out what it was all about in the last few weeks of someone’s life or the first few months after death, and it doesn’t seem to me to be a characteristic just of the controversial or of psychiatrists.

Day, E. and Keeley, G. ‘Dad solved other people’s problems – not his own’. Observer Review 1st June 2008: 4-5.

Pics of the rebuilding at St Christopher’s, now under way, in solidarity with all colleagues working through a difficult time, to make things better in the future: