The recent trend towards the provision of care for the mentally ill patient in the community, with the consequent shift of resources invested into community structures, has had repercussions in hospital wards (Harrington, 1988). The increasing number of mental-health resource centres located in the community, with their emphasis on multidisciplinary work and on the psychosocial aspects of mental illness, have gradually substituted for acute admission wards as the places which are felt to provide a sense of achievement and fulfilment to staff. Indeed, requests for relocation from mainly non-medical staff, and applications for jobs in mental-resource centres, have increased. There is a growing sense that staff who work in the community feel more privileged than those who have been ‘left behind’ in wards — where, it is held, an outdated approach to mental suffering is adopted.