Healthcare's big change

PATIENTS and staff from the city's psychiatric hospital have contributed to a new book about mental health care.

The Royal Edinburgh's Patients' Council provided a range of stories and accounts about the shift from hospital-based care to being looked after in - and integrated into - the community.

The Stories of Changing Lives publication focuses on the era in the mid 1990s which brought significant changes to the way thousands of people lived.

Linda Irvine, NHS Lothian's strategic programme manager, said: "This book tells the extraordinary stories of remarkable people who made huge changes in their lives."