The National Service Framework for Mental Health

xcept in a dictatorship, politics and government are about pleasing the majority. Most legislation and political commentary is framed with the masses in mind. It is unsurprising, therefore, to find orthodox thinking at the heart of the National Service Framework ‐ an orthodoxy that is difficult to challenge. Blair-world is an increasingly conventional place, and the National Service Framework seeks to standardise it even further with its ambitions for more uniformity in mental health provision. If it can assure fairer shares for all, history will adjudge it an astounding piece of strategy. However, standardisation and uniformity carry the risk that innovation and creativity, not to mention edifying serendipity, might be lost from the equation. The basis of any strategy is its philosophy. I encounter several schools of thought wrestling under the blanket strategy of the National Service Framework. The Framework cannot be read without taking cognisance of related ‘strategy’ ‐ especially the reform of the Mental Health Act 1983. The overall message of the Framework is unequivocally positive in tone, if limited in outlook. ‘Let us do better’, it seems to say. The difficulties lie in the conjugal definitions of ‘us’ and ‘better’. The devil is always in the detail. Some will quibble about the elasticity of the £700 million ‘float’ for the Framework ‐ how far will it stretch and over what areas, exactly? I find myself concerned more with the ‘how’ than the ‘what’, for it is there that we might encounter some significant