Editorial

Dementia, personality disorder and suicide respectively constitute three of the most pressing public health matters of growing concern as we enter the third decade of the 21^st Century. There are, of course, many different theoretical frameworks within which to research and formulate preventative and treatment interventions for each of these conditions, but as the papers in this issue demonstrate, psychoanalytic and psychodynamic approaches are of increasing relevance in addressing these issues in public health settings.

The first two papers examine their subject not from the direct perspective of the patient or sufferer, but from those tasked with their care. The first paper, ‘Living with dementia: Using mentalization-based understandings to support family carers’, by Phil McEvoy, Lydia Morris, Natalie Yates-Bolton and Georgina Charlesworth, describes a mentalization-based communication skills training course, ‘Empowered Conversations’, for the family carers who provide support to people with dementia in their own homes. This intervention examines the emotional dimensions of communication between the carer and the person being cared for, focusing on the impact of mentalizing and non-mentalizing states of mind on their relationship. Illustrated by moving case vignettes, the authors show how in enabling carers to become more aware of their own mental states in relation to their relative with dementia, positive shifts in defences, emotional attunement and empathic understanding may occur in both partners in the relationship.

The second paper, ‘Containment? An investigation into psychoanalytic containment in the NHS in relation to someone with a diagnosis of personality disorder’, by Elizabeth Weightman and Janet Smithson, investigates the attitudes of the staff looking after patients with a diagnosis of personality disorder in a National Health Service (NHS) personality disorder specialist unit. Drawing on the psychoanalytic literature exploring staff and institutional r