Sir - When I was briefly a psychiatric in-patient in Surrey on four occasions in the 1980s, all of which could have been avoided, had the treatment I received not been so utterly abominable, the cause for concern was the sometimes brutal, ignorant, callous and mocking attitude of nurses towards the patients, not the opposite.

Having said that, 1,605 incidents, the vast majority of which are clearly trivial, involving 1,700 staff in one year in Oxfordshire (Oxford Mail, August 6), does not strike me as being disturbing and, to some extent, is "part of the job" just as, for example, is the occasional theft of cash and personal effects. Any serious physical violence, however, is obviously indicative of the shortcomings of the service.

I was constantly struck by the differences in the quality of nurses, wondering why some, both indigenous and foreign, were not psychiatrists, being more knowledgeable, compassionate and saner than some doctors, and why others were ever allowed to wear the uniform at all, having entered the profession for motley reasons which self-evidently had precious little to do with vocation. This was apparently before the age of reliance on agencies, which adds another dimension to the problem.

Another source of considerable tension was that, in acute admission wards, schizophrenics, manic depressives, neurotics, anorexics and assorted drug addicts were thrown together.

I almost laughed at the figure of "77 medication errors" in a year. It could be argued that I alone was on the receiving end of that number over a three-year period.

What constitutes a "medication error" in psychiatry - scarcely an exact science?

It is alarmingly retrogressive that, with whatever degree of justification, it is felt that the wards in the Warneford Hospital in Oxford need to be locked.

David Diment

Riverside Court

Oxford