Discussion of Terry Owens' Paper.

The author discusses Owens' paper from the point of view of a deterioration in mental health services in the US and in the UK with regard to the need in patients to establish trusting relationships as a pre-requisite to psychological stability and wellbeing. The advent of rapidly acting psychotropic drugs and a proliferation of short term psychological treatments, often addressed to very severe disturbance, sometimes with benefit to certain patients, are increasingly used to avoid fundamental needs for dependency. Owens discusses the serious fallout of this problem in the context of disturbed adolescents and bi-polar patients whose most basic developmental needs are too often not met, but the difficulty is widespread, this author suggests. The avoidance of close contact with patients who are disturbed is supported by cultural values that endorse technological and functional achievements above the need for human relatedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]