Strategies for Tomorrow

Abstract

The last chapter of a book should be the most important. It is the acid test for both authors and readers where two lonely questions emerge. ‘What has been demonstrated so far?’ and ‘What can people take away that will actually be useful?’ It is not so difficult to be critical, not so easy to offer constructive alternatives, but a practical book in a practical series has to do just that. Yet we tread a tightrope here, for sometimes a simple exhortation to do may in fact be simplistic and may merely encourage practitioners to think that solutions are self-evident. Psychiatrists face similar problems if they rely over-much on chemotherapy and take little account of the family, and social and other environments which affect their patients’ responses; on the other hand, people learn best by doing and they, therefore, need models for action. A misguided guide can, in fact, be the quickest method of discovering what the problems really are.