I am an agent of social control: the bailiff of mental health services. I walk past your Skoda, your sofa, and your speakers. I take you away instead. I take you because you don’t understand the risks that you face. You are in debt to psychiatry without realising it:  you lack insight. We could have helped you, come to an understanding, but you were non-concordant, you disengaged…

There is a growing need and a desire to re-orientate professional practice in Mental Health Act interviews towards a more fundamentally relational and dialogical approach. I set out the case for this in an article last year entitled ‘It’s time to make Mental Health Act interviews more dialogical’ and also in an episode of the Relational Psychiatry vlog by Russell Razzaque (link below). It has been brilliant to receive so many supportive responses from AMHPs and indeed psychiatrists around the country, and although anecdotal, I get the distinct sense that dialogical ideas are strongly resonating with AMHPs as we seek to freshen up our practice in the face of new and old problems in the mental health system.