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Working for Social and Ethical Change MADAM - Many thanks to Mick Skelly In the community you can visit for so eloquently putting into words people who are anxious and very so much that I have been conscious depressed only to find their living of and talked about, particularly over conditions are so poor and general the last fifteen years (‘Research Into stresses are so great that you feel

Working in mental health it is very their anxiety Or encourage stress upsetting to help clients to improve, management. to the point when they are ready for You quite frequently meet suicidal discharge, only to find either they are clients who say ’My life is not worth going back to the deprived, threaten- living’ and YOU can quite see they ing, end-of-the-line circumstances are telling the truth. which brought them into hospital in Assertiveness training hardly the first place, or they have nowhere seems to be worth while when a client to go at all. is beaten by an alcoholic husband -

standing up for yourself in those situations can be dangerous.

Treating an asthmatic child being raised in a one-room home with despairing parents who smoke as

has its limitations. So if anyone is thinking of starting a

group called Chartered Physiothera- pists in Working for Social and Ethical Change - put me down as a founder member.

Anna 6 COrSer MCSP Stratford on Avon

reality’, June 1996). totally inadequate trying to calm an addiction against hopelessness

Knickers (Getting MADAM - With the profession’s attempts to improve its research knowledge base, and the CSP’s encouragement for its members to partake in rigorous research, I am appalled at the frivolity of your leading article ‘Are you wearing knickers?’ (Physiotherapy, July 1996).

What an inappropriate article for our professional journal!

I note that in the same journal are the guidelines for authors writing for Physiotherapy. Would this not be a much more appropriate place for the editor to make known what is and is not acceptable language to be used in articles submitted to the Journal?

What is stopping us having guide- lines like the British Sociological Association (1 993) on anti-sexist lan- guage, anti-disabling language, and anti-racist language, etc? Perhaps then we will all be aware of what is and is not appropriate language. Perhaps physiotherapists might take the issue more seriously, and our research might be more readily accepted by other professional groups. Sue Danks MCSP Surbiton

Reference British Psychological Association (1993). Statement of Ethical Practice, BPA, London.

in a Twist) MADAM - Thank you so much for your witty and apposite remarks on the way we spoil our English lan- guage by wrong usage (‘Are you wearing knickers?’ Physiotherapy, July 1996).

In our attempts to put our patients at ease we use their first names, and only succeed in making them feel uncomfortable and patronised. This is especially the case when we are speaking to older patients.

Perhaps we will soon see less of the confusion, in research reports, in the use of terms like ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’ and in the differences between sex and gender. Our newly qualified physiotherapists will have undertaken research projects at their universities and should be better equipped to write scientific papers.

Your editorial was succinct and thought-provoking, as well as being a pleasure to read.

Margaret Page MCSP Bournemouth

MADAM - I am a little surprised to learn from your leader that the use of the English language is so influenced by Messrs Marks and Spencer.

Here in the north of England we all wear knickers, and wear them with pride! We refer to these undergar- ments as ‘knickers’ not because we suffer from corporate incontin- ence, nor because we are uncouth, but simply because that is their

accepted name. Do patients in the south really refer to them as ‘briefs’? How quaint!

I would suggest that those of you in the south might take pause to consider the fact that there is a world outside of London; regional differences do exist, and as such contribute to the richness of the English-language.

In future, please take heed of your own recommendations! Carole A Eales MCSP Sheffield

MADAM - With reference to your article ‘Are you wearing knickers?’ you appear to have overlooked one major factor in an attempt to be overly politically correct. The fact is that in the north of England, as across the Atlantic, ‘pants’ are actually trousers and not knickers or briefs!

Your article was entirely pointless and I think you’ll find that any ‘elderly gentleman’ in the street would much rather be referred to as such, rather than as an ‘old man’.

G Wilde MCSP Get in touch with reality!

The leader writer replies: Well - you did read it!

I was born and bred in Yorkshire - but I never wear knickers.

All these writers make valid points which I appreciate, but for the sake of our more sensitive readers, this correspondence is now closed.

JW

Physiotherapy, August 1996, vol 82, no 8

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