interdependence of patients to help them get better. Patients may want to be isolated in their rooms and to have one-to-one therapy in which they talk about all the difficulties of their childhoods and subsequent adult lives - but that is not what gets them better. They need the exposure, in group therapy sessions of one kind or another, morning, afternoon and evening, day after day, to the support and challenge of other patients who are similarly involved in tackling their distorted self-perceptions and learning a new set of principles, attitudes and behaviours one day at a time.

A major part of the early days or weeks in treatment will be spent in digging out false perceptions. One cannot teach people anything new if they believe that they already know all the answers. Often, at the time that patients come to PROMIS, they will have had many years of "treatments" of one kind or another that have mostly been instigated by themselves. In PROMIS they mostly learn from each other, through recognising that those methods of "treatment" that they have tried for themselves have not worked any better for the other patients.

Once they have recognised that, they will need to develop new perceptions on what does work - and what does not - in the treatment of eating disorders. They are helped considerably in this process by observing previous patients who are now doing very well. PROMIS invites previous patients to visit the Recovery Centre every Saturday evening for specific talks to the existing patients. We also have a system in which former patients in the first year of their recovery are invited back to spend one weekend at PROMIS every month. This has the dual benefit of exposing the new patients to people who have had successful treatment and it reminds the former patients of where they came from. Both benefit: the existing patients get encouragement and inspiration, the former patients get healthy reminders of the potential price of relapse.

An important part of the first two or three weeks of treatment at PROMIS is to wean patients gently off the anti-depressants that they may previously have been prescribed. Obviously they are weaned off appetite suppressants, including amphetamines, because these are addictive drugs in their own right. Exactly the same general principle applies to tranquillisers, anti-depressants and sleeping tablets: they are addictive to people who suffer from neurotransmission disease. In any case, they do not help patients to deal with the realities of their lives: they smother them. They also impede any development of true emotions. At PROMIS patients are encouraged to feel sad when unfortunate things happen, just as they are encouraged to feel happy when life has more fortunate turns. The problem with antidepressants, tranquillisers and sleeping tablets is that they may superficially protect patients from bad feelings but they also remove the good ones. The end result is that patients lose the capacity to make appropriate judgements. This is a dreadful plight, to lose the capacity to distinguish between beauty and ugliness, happiness and sadness, freedom and imprisonment. All that remains is internal indifference, a life without colour or value.