This is what I love about the Internet - you get too see how the other half live... The CPN service is part of the local health trust that care for the mentally ill in the community, a bit like District Nurses go around dressing leg ulcers and giving injections to our older clients. The CPN service is supposed to provide a community based care package so that people with mental illness live out in the community and not in mental health units. It's cheaper for the government, and when a patient kills themselves it's never really reported. It's only when one goes on a killing spree that the media take any sort of notice. It might not work so bad except...most psychiatric nurses are well and truly crap. Whe I did my nurse training all those years ago I spent the first 18 months with a load of psychiatric nurses - and they are the laziest bunch around; half of them were on drugs during the weekend and at least two of them were alcoholics. Then I spent some time working in a psychiatric rehab unit - and they don't seem to mellow with age...instead they spend all their time in the office watching TV and drinking tea - only emerging to make sure that the "clients" are fed. Of course there are exceptions - the Whittington hospital had a good team the last time I worked there - but that is exceptionaly by virtue of it being unique in that they will come and see a psychiatric patient immediately rather than wait until they are "medically fit". I'm getting bitter in my old age.